Daybreakers
by CarpeDiem102
Summary: It is 2019, and almost everyone in the world is a vampire. Kurt Hummel is an average citizen of New York City and has conceded to a life of little change, until he makes a discovery that will alter his future forever.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: So this story is sort of a mix between Klaine and the movie Daybreakers. If you haven't seen Daybreakers and are a horror/suspense junkie like me, you should check it out, it's pretty good. Anyway, the vampires in my story are going to adhere to those from Daybreaker's-no big superpowers, just pale skin, golden eyes, and they're burned by the sun. My future chapters are not going to be this long, in fact, they'll be quite a bit shorter. This is just to get the ball rolling for the rest of the story and to establish the characters. Enjoy :)**

* * *

><p>November 28, 2019—8:15pm EST—44⁰ F—New York City<p>

* * *

><p>A few scraps of crumpled newspaper drift along the dimly lit streets, riding the light nighttime breeze. Each spotlight of yellow from the streetlamps above highlight the thin layer of accumulated grime on the surface of the pavement. It is dark and the air is chilling. But the city stays very much alive.<p>

The term 'nightlife' has more or less been eliminated from the general vocabulary. 'Nightlife' has become regular life, and the daytime is void of any action, at least above ground. The world is changed, and the balance of power has shifted to a different species. Glowing billboards depict images of pale, smooth faces, and golden yellow eyes peer from behind whitened, commercial smiles. The ubiquitous, rotating 'S' symbolizing the_ Subwalk_ tunnels pulsate around every corner, on every television screen.

"_In recent news, President Moore has just returned to the states after visiting with Britain's Prime Minister to discuss the future possibility of a worldwide blood crisis. Third-world countries have already begun to feel the effects of starvation and Congress members are currently debating whether or not to send aid to those countries' governments…" _

The blaring voices of CNN reporters echo through the streets from lucrative newsstands. Faintly interested citizens pass by and glance apathetically at the videos showing destruction and desolation before continuing on by without so much as a compassionate thought.

"_During last week's press conference, Moore assured the media that military efforts to capture remaining humans have increased two-fold. However, despite the President's confidence, many corporations have begun to pull their human stock and lay their trust in the hands of larger blood-farming companies such as Bromley Marks…" _

"_Senator Wes Turner has started a campaign against human farming and teamed up with renowned hematologists of the Bromley Marks Corporation to find a suitable blood substitute…"_

"_The NYPD and other local law enforcers have come together in order to solve the outbreak of subsider attacks in suburban areas as well as the Subwalk tunnels…"_

"_This program is brought to you by Subwalk, the safest way to travel during the daytime…" _

Sounds mingle and mesh into one monotonous buzz. The noise fills the air and replaces the memory of silence itself.

A boy strolls down the edge of the curb, the concrete glistening with the grit of passing cars and remnants of rain. His brown, chestnut hair stands in stark contrast to his pale, satin skin and his irises flash in the beams of glaring headlamps. A grey zip-up hoodie caresses his slim frame as he ambles along against the current of the oncoming crowd.

The day is just beginning for him; the sun has only recently set. He can smell the crisp scent of winter on the air and the promise of snow. His sight rests on his favorite coffee booth just up ahead, famous around the block for consistently serving twenty percent blood in every beverage.

After he pays for his drink, he sits down on a nearby bench and sips lightly, sighing as a glowing warmth spreads through to the tips of his fingers. People pass by and give him no notice. He is accustomed to being alone; he never was much of a people person, even before the outbreak ten years ago.

Snippets of memories of his human life rush back to him in a mournful haze. He cannot remember what it is like to have a heartbeat, to feel the rays of sun on his skin, to grow older. His old life is overshadowed by newer, darker experiences, and his past is slipping away.

Suddenly, his phone vibrates in his pocket and startles him from his reverie. He pulls the device out and sees a picture of his father in the center of his screen, his thumb drifting deftly over the touch pad as he accepts the call.

"Dad?"

"Kurt, where are you? Did you leave the house early again?"

"Yeah. Is that a problem?"

"Yes, it is. How many times do Carol and I have to tell you? If you're going to go out for a walk in the morning, at least write us a note so we know where you are."

"Dad, I think I'm old enough that I can go where I please. I've turned seventeen ten times."

"You're still underage, which means you will abide by our rules, especially while living under our roof."

"Maybe I should just move out then. It's about time."

"Hey, I don't want any lip from you right now. Just come home so we can have breakfast as a family for once. Carol has a treat for us; I'm not supposed to tell you, but she managed to snag a package of 'A- positive'. Isn't that great? A _whole_ package. I hear the pure stuff is pretty hard to find nowadays, too."

"…Okay, fine, I'm coming home." Kurt says begrudgingly, his thumb and forefinger pinching insistently at the bridge of his nose. "But at some point, you have to accept that I'm not your teenage son anymore, Dad."

"By technicality, you are." His father replies. The call cuts off abruptly and Kurt is left staring at the blank screen of his phone. He feels empty and cold.

The walk back home does not take long. Kurt uses a shortcut through alleyways and backstreets, the route so familiar, he could navigate it blindfolded. His previous home in Ohio had been left behind once his family had all turned; the decision to move had been unanimous. It was safer in the city; there were more of their kind living there, and, as Kurt's father had reiterated numerous times before, strength is found in numbers.

Kurt rounds the corner onto his street, breathing a contented sigh as the immense wall of his apartment building shields the noise from the busier street. He glances up at the mountain of glass and metal, watching as the light from a passing car flashes, serpent-like against the inky black panes.

By the time he steps through the threshold of his home, his family is seated around the dining room table—a rare sight indeed, considering they eat in front of the television most nights—feasting away on Carol's surprise breakfast. Burt looks up at the sound of the creaking door and smiles at his son, the corners of his mouth stained a dark, enticing maroon. A spoon sits in between his strong fingers, and in it a few wheat cereal bites are perched in a pool of the same reddish liquid. Its scent is potent and fills the room in a tantalizing haze. Kurt finds himself drawn to the table, his quarry with his father all but forgotten as he sits with the rest of them and reaches for a bowl.

"How was your walk, Kurt?" Carol asks as she shakes cereal into Kurt's bowl, handing him a spoon.

"Same as usual. Got a cup of coffee."

"You need to stop wasting your money on coffee." She says with motherly disapproval.

"You need to stop wasting your money on cigarettes." Kurt replies bluntly. Ever since the outbreak when the whole of society discovered their nasty habit would no longer kill them, more and more people have taken up smoking as a pastime. The chemicals still affect the system, but the smoke no longer damages the lungs, leaving the population addicted but not harmed. The only disadvantage for Kurt is the smell; he hated it as a human and he still hates it now.

Carol screws up her mouth, unable to produce any valid argument, and takes a long drag on the cigarette, blowing silvery-gray tendrils out through her parted lips. Her eyes flicker over to Kurt's bowl again and she springs up from her chair, grabbing the plastic pouch of blood from the kitchen counter and brandishing it with a grin. The pouch is one normally connected to an intravenous tube, the symbol 'A+' printed in bold letters across the white label.

"Guess what I have?" She sings, shaking the pouch lightly so its contents slosh distractingly in its container.

"Wait, don't tell me…" Kurt says sarcastically, but his remark is absent of any edge, for his attention is focused on the thing in her hand instead. He takes the offered blood and pours it over the cereal as if it were a quart of milk, licking his lips absently as a drop splashes off the edge of the bowl and onto his hand.

In retrospect, the wheat cereal is not at all essential to the meal. All nutritional value comes from the blood alone. But, even ten years after the abrupt dietary change, Kurt, as well as the rest of society, prefers to include regular food as well. The small slivers of memory from previous human life constitute this habit; it symbolizes civility in an act that would normally be considered gruesome. By including normal food, consuming blood doesn't seem so barbaric.

The taste lingers on his tongue, rushes through his cold veins and awakens his senses. He can feel so much more, can hear every tinkering sound in the apartment. Invigoration soars in him, warm and strong.

How ironic that, while the population berates the idea of humanity, they crave the very thing that makes them feel alive again.

* * *

><p>Kurt thumbs through the songs on his iPhone during his usual, daily walk. He selects one of Celine Dion's many hits and strolls happily down the sidewalk, the darkness alight with flashing neon colors. His watch reads 7:34. Night is beginning to come sooner with the approaching winter, and he mulls over fashionable winter clothing as he makes his way back to the apartment.<p>

He passes an alley on his left. Long and dark, the shadows creep along its walls and devour the brick until its depths are cloaked in blackness. The alley is a short distance away from his home, so he knows it well. The narrow space is surrounded on three sides by buildings, fire escapes cascading down to the ground from closed windows. Five years ago, he used to retreat there when he needed time to himself. Now, he rarely ventures down the path.

A flicker of a shadow catches the corner of his eye and he stops mid-step. His hands shoot up to pull out his earphones, and Celine's voice disappears as he stuffs the tangle of wires into his jean pocket. Silence envelops him like a fog.

He turns to gaze into the mouth of the alley, and for a moment feels a twitch of alarm. Countless news stories of subsider attacks appear front and center in his mind, and he tenses, half-expecting one of the grotesque creatures to spring out from the behind the line of black. Instead, a faint shuffling echoes off the walls, followed by a weak cough. Kurt's ears prick as he listens for any more signs of life and he shifts forward involuntarily, flinching when his shoe scuffs against the pavement, loud in comparison to the surrounding quiet.

"Hello?" Kurt calls softly, angling his head curiously. His muscles are still stretched taut with caution.

No answer comes, but suddenly the air seems too quiet, as if the silence is intentional. Kurt steps deliberately now, bringing himself closer to the edge of where the light from the streetlamp disappears. He contemplates something for a moment, and then pulls out his phone, using the light of the screen as a torch as he shines it into the space. The alley brightens slightly, enough for him to see the outline of objects along the ground. Two dumpsters sit facing opposite of each other, bits of torn newspaper littering the pavement below them. The black, wiry skeletons of the fire escapes protrude from the walls and down. Cardboard boxes are stacked in lopsided piles where owners had left them, bits of packing peanuts strewn along the building's foundation. Noticing nothing out of the ordinary, Kurt retracts his phone and slides it back into his pocket, giving the alleyway one last cursory glance before turning to leave.

There is a barely audible, but discernable exhaling of breath.

Kurt whips around, pulling out his phone and shining the light in one swift movement, quickly enough to catch the silhouette of a figure dart across the space. He switches the camera flash on and sets it on a steady beam, squinting as the alley is flooded in a brighter, white glare. He can see everything now; he can identify the individual flecks of color in the pale bricks, the stains of the slimy residue creeping along the concrete. Again, the alley is empty of any signs of life, and Kurt nearly growls in frustration. One of the dumpsters casts a shadow behind it from the light, serving as the only hiding place for the mysterious being that Kurt is searching for. He determinedly strides into the alley, keeping his phone at an arm's length in front of him. The shadow shrinks as he gets closer, ebbs away as the white swallows it.

Kurt stands nearly four inches from the side of the dumpster, and shoves his arms forward, drenching the small space with brightness.

He's suddenly staring at a boy.

Cowering pitifully in the corner, his arm stretched out protectively in front of him, the boy cringes into the wall, his eyes squeezed shut in frightened expectation. Of what he is bracing himself for, Kurt does not know, but he feels his nerves begin to deflate, and he frowns sadly as he stares at the poor person below him.

_He must be homeless_, Kurt thinks, and he feels a small part of his heart ache in reaction to the somber thought. The boy looks ragged and unclean, his curly mass of dark hair matted against his forehead from dried grime and rain, clothing frayed and torn in some places and covered in a layer of dirt and street runoff.

His breathing is panicked and erratic, his body trembling violently, and Kurt wonders what he is so afraid of.

"Um, hi." Kurt ventures, waving awkwardly with his free hand. He reaches out to touch the quivering figure, but the boy shrinks farther back, choking and stuttering on terrified breaths.

"My name is Kurt. What's yours?"

"D-don't—!"

Kurt flinches at the sudden shout, but stays where he is standing.

"P-please d-don't kill me…Please, I-I'm b-begging you," the boy's voice is hoarse and scratchy and he is obviously exhausted. Kurt is taken aback, his eyes widening with concern.

"What? Wh-Why…I-I would never…I'm not going to hurt you or anything, I'm just…" He stammers, trailing off in shock.

Kurt watches as the boy cautiously glances up from his hunched position, keeping his arms half extended to ensure a safe distance between them. His frightened gaze travels from Kurt's shoes up, calculating the danger risk with every stitch of fabric, every inch of muscle, every curve of bone, eventually rising up to Kurt's face and locking eyes with shaky deliberation.

_Oh._

Green…green and copper and little slivers of earthy, nutty brown that fan away from the intense, black center point in a gradient-like array of hazel. They are beautiful.

And yet…so, so very earth shattering.

Because nobody has green eyes. Or blue eyes. Or black or brown or grey. Nobody. Only the same piercing, unanimous gold. Kurt's mind spins rapidly and his breath halts midway up his throat; he realizes what he is looking at, what the person crouching less than eight feet away from him really, truly is.

Human.

"Oh…Oh my god…" Kurt murmurs, his jaw dropping open as his brain pieces together the impossible, that there, in one of the most inhabited, bustling cities in North America, a human is wandering alive and un-captured.

"P-please…I don't want to die…"

"I'm not going to hurt you, I promise, I just…I can't believe…you're…you're _human_," he breathes the last word with a sense of wonderment. Kurt shifts his weight onto the balls of his feet and crouches down until he is at the same height as the boy, holding out his hands in a reassuring gesture so as not to scare him. He doesn't give a second thought to the possibility of soiling his clothing or mussing his hair. He is mesmerized, enraptured by the situation.

Kurt lifts out his arm for a customary handshake, but suddenly the formality seems corny and completely inappropriate for the current circumstance, so he lets it fall. Meanwhile, the boy is pressed flush against the brick wall behind him, eyes darting in every direction as he tries to find an escape, somewhere he could run to, but he comes up dry. Kurt has him pinned in a corner, and the only way out would be to use violence. He can't risk it for fear of being overheard and caught. He is trapped.

"Do…do you have a family?" Kurt asks carefully.

The boy stays determinedly quiet, his jaw set stiffly in reaction to the question. Kurt realizes he struck a nerve, and he backtracks.

"I'm not interested in exposing them, I swear, I…I'm just curious if you came here alone or if you've lost your group. I won't call the cops or anything; that would be the equivalent of killing you…" he shudders at the thought and swallows, taking a moment to regain some composure before speaking again. "You can trust me. I like humans and I miss being one. I won't put you or anybody else in danger. Please, don't be so afraid. I can help you."

The boy shifts uneasily, his gaze darting around the alley for a moment before resting back on Kurt. A resigned sigh pushes past his cracked lips as he realizes there is nowhere to go, no other option but to place his life in the hands of the being across from him, and a lump of fear forms in his throat.

Kurt notices the change in temperament and he smiles, celebrating. "So, like I said, my name is Kurt. What's yours?"

Hesitation. The tension lingering in the air is strong and palpable.

"…Blaine."

"Nice to meet you, Blaine." Kurt says warmly. "How long have you been in the city?"

Blaine's brow pulls together, his wide eyes refusing to so much as blink as he sifts through his memory for a date or any length of time.

"I…can't remember exactly." He whispers. "…a week or two, at least...maybe three."

"Where have you been staying?"

"W-why do you want to know?" Blaine counters Kurt's question with another, his voice carrying a tangible edge. Kurt puts his hands up as a sign of peace.

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. I understand. It must be incredibly frightening being in a city surrounded by people…" Kurt smirks. "…people like me. Well, assuming that you think of us as people at all."

"I d-don't." Blaine replies firmly, though his voice breaks with anxiety.

"…I understand that, too. If I were in your position, I wouldn't think of me as someone who had a conscience, either."

Blaine's features contort with confusion and alarmed disbelief. "W-why are you being s-so…empathetic?"

Kurt raises his eyebrows questioningly. "Why wouldn't I be? I was once human. I wouldn't like it if I were treated like nothing more than a piece of cattle."

"But…but you're one of…_them_."

"I'm not like everybody else."

"W-well, you say that, but…why should I trust you?"

Kurt considers something for a moment and then squares his shoulders, locking gazes with Blaine meaningfully. "I can't give you a reason. I wouldn't expect you to believe me if I did. All I can say—all I can _promise_—is that I won't do you any purposeful harm. I'm not saying you have to trust me. I'm just saying you can."

Blaine nods numbly and swallows, a long moment of silence passing before his body visibly begins to relax. His head slumps back against the wall and his eyelids fight against the gravity pulling them closed. A long breath escapes through his lips as if he had been holding it in for days, and his arms fall slack against the concrete beneath him.

In the light of his camera, Kurt finally notices what he missed in the tense conversation that he perhaps should have noticed before. Blaine's skin is very pale, nearly as pale as his own, and stretches taut across his cheekbones. A thin sheen of sweat slicks the plane of his forehead and purple, bruise-like shadows frame the underside of his eyes. Not having seen a human in nearly eight years, Kurt did not immediately realize the problem.

"You're sick," he says, more to verify his own silent question than to inform Blaine.

"…I guess."

"And you're starving. When did you last eat?"

"…can't…can't remember…"

Kurt does not think twice before speaking, and his voice comes strong and firm. "You need to let me help you."

"W…what?"

"Let me help you. Come with me to my apartment. I can get you some food and you can shower and recover."

"_What?_ N-no—no, no I can't—"

"You wouldn't be imposing on me or anything, I really don't mind at all."

"No, n-not that. I can't just…just _come back_ with you." Blaine says, his eyes wide again with shock, his mouth opening and closing as if he wanted to say more but couldn't find the air to do so.

"Well, not right now. You'd have to wait a few hours until my Mom and Dad leave for work and my brother leaves for school. After that, the place will be empty." Kurt sees the doubt in Blaine's eyes and he sighs. Blaine seems to find his air again he opens his mouth to speak.

"But, what if somebody notices me on the way there? What if they smell me or something, or see my face or…" he trails off as possible scenarios flash through his mind.

"Here, you can take my sweatshirt." Kurt says immediately, pulling his arms out of the sleeves as he undoes the zipper. He folds the garment in his hands and drops it in Blaine's lap so he can't refuse the offer. "Just pull up the hood so nobody can see your eyes. And I wouldn't worry about your scent." Kurt throws him a rueful, lopsided grin. "No offense, but hanging around dumpsters doesn't make you smell like a rosebush. I don't think you'll have a problem."

Blaine's gaze whirls between Kurt's sympathetic face and the grey sweatshirt lying in his lap. He considers the situation with the same enthusiasm a dead man may have when choosing the manner of his execution. In the end, the empty gurgling of his stomach and the sting of his parched throat wins out.

"…I guess…I guess I can come with you," he mutters. Kurt frowns at his lifeless tone.

"I won't let anything happen to you."

"…okay."

"I _won't_."

Blaine looks up into Kurt's eyes, suddenly feeling moved by the amount of sincerity that lies there. Kurt is so sure, so intensely earnest, he almost believes him.

"How long should I wait?"

Kurt looks at his watch, gauging the time in his head.

"Give me…two hours. I'll come back here and walk you to my place."

"What if something comes up?" Blaine asks.

"I'll understand. If I don't find you here, I'll assume you had to escape from danger." He catches Blaine's concerned eyes flicker down to his sweatshirt. "Don't worry about that. You can keep it."

"Are you sure?"

"Of course."

"Two hours, then?" Blaine breathes, his anxiety showing as his fists curl tightly around the soft fabric.

"Two hours."

Kurt gives one last final nod and stands up to leave. He turns the light off on his phone, leaving the alley flooded in darkness, his footsteps echoing off the concrete as he approaches the light of the streetlamp again. Just as he reaches that line, Blaine speaks up hastily.

"Hey!"

Kurt's footfalls stop and another pause of silence congeals the air around him. Blaine bites his lip nervously.

"Thank you."

Kurt's lips pull into a smile and he continues walking down the empty road to his home, reveling in the feeling that is coursing through him. He has never felt so warm, so liberated, so free. Something about that boy, Blaine, draws the happiness and sadness out in a way he has never felt before, and he doesn't know quite what to think of it. He looks down at his watch, counting the seconds in a minute and aching at how they suddenly feel so long.

Two hours. One hundred and twenty minutes. Seven-thousand, two hundred seconds.

In two hours, his life as he knows it will change.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Okay, just to be clear, subsiders are sort of like crazed, conscienceless beings that thirst for blood. They aren't a separate species or anything; they're the product of blood-starved vampires. The vamps eventually evolve into these creatures b/c the lack of blood leads to lack of serotonin in the brain which inhibits judgment and reasoning…and the things are butt ugly, too…**

**This chapter starts out in Blaine's point of view while he is dreaming. Enjoy!**

* * *

><p>"<em>Mom?" he calls into the cavernous tomb of his home. Piles of debris lay scattered along the floorboards. The Brazilian cherry wood that had been so beautiful is caked in a layer of dust and plaster from the collapsed ceiling above them. The air is cold from the cross breeze wafting through the shattered windows and glass shards descend from above in a tinkering, shimmering rain. <em>

_He has never been so afraid. It is almost impossible to comprehend exactly what is going on in the blur of action around him. He can hear shouting and screaming tumbling through the hallways upstairs, and the part of his mind still processing events wonders who is making the sounds._

_Moonlight streams down in rays of albicant, crystalline blue through the small holes peppering the planes of the walls surrounding him. Numbly, he steps over to one of them and presses his eye to the opening, peering out at the lawn cloaked in fog as he searches for something unseen. The grass sprawls far outside of his line of vision, swallowed up by the darkness that his weak, human eyes cannot penetrate. _

_And then they catch his eye, the advancing line of black that moves silently, swiftly across the property in the direction of the house. He panics, backing away from the hole just in time for another projectile to burst through what was left of the window next to him and embed itself in the opposite wall. _

_He fights to stay upright as his knees buckle underneath him and he clings to the chair rail, unable to hold back the sobs that wrack his thin frame. He can hear his father bellowing from upstairs, the man's usually cool voice strained with fear and hysteria. _

"_Blaine, where's Blaine? Goddammit where is that boy? Blaine! Blaaaiine!"_

"_Dad?" he croaks, his fingers slipping from sweat on the minimal grip of the rail. A few seconds pass before he sees his father race out of a room upstairs and squint down at him from over the banister of the grand staircase, forehead brown with grime and soot. _

"_What in the hell do you think you're doing down there? Get upstairs now! And stay away from that window!"_

_Blaine hesitates, taking a few panting breaths before stumbling away from the wall and up the stairs, pausing only for a second to glance at what had wedged itself into the wall from before. The color of it stands out so sharply against the dim grey of night that he is forced to blink as the fire-hydrant-red comes into focus. His first instinct tells him it is a bird from the mass of feathers that sticks outwards from the crack, but as he stares longer, he realizes that the feathers are attached to something other than a living—or formerly living—body. A short, metal shaft protrudes from behind them, and Blaine's stomach cramps with nausea as he realizes they are tranquilizer darts, the kind used on zoo animals like he'd seen as a kid._

_He scrambles up the remaining steps, breath hitching with terror as a thought flickers in his mind; his memory of the zoo probably is not too far off because in reality, they are nothing more than animals being poached. Once he reaches the landing his father grabs his wrist and yanks him down the hall, his grip rough and unbreakable as iron fetters. Blaine barely stays vertical as his feet catch on pile after pile of rubble. _

_He is pushed into one of the spare bedrooms and goes sprawling to the floor, his forearms burning from the friction of the carpet as they cushion his landing. He hears the door slam behind him and lock, and suddenly he realizes that his entire family is in there with him, his mother and sister huddled on the guest bed and his dog cowering under the computer desk, whining and whimpering with the heartbreaking innocence only a dog could possess. _

_Blaine pushes himself up into a sitting position, processing the situation with frightful confusion. His sister is crying endlessly into his mother's shoulder, and the older woman is working desperately to try and quiet her. She rubs circles into the girl's shoulder blades and coos softly, but the movement is too harried and the sound is too tense to be comforting. _

"_Mommyyy, what's going on?" the child blubbers, but no answer comes save for hushed shushing. _

_Blaine takes a moment to stare in wonder at his father's hunched form; never before has he seen the man display any intense emotion such as this. All his life his father has been some sort of untouchable idol, an indisputable authority figure on the periphery of his life, and Blaine can't help but wonder where their relationship truly stands. Because the way his father is looking at him now, his eyes filled with compassion and love and regret and deep, deep sadness, it is apparent that the man thinks and feels differently about his son than Blaine would have ever guessed, and it aches to think that he had never really known the man that helped bring him into existence at all. _

_Not that it matters anyway, because something tells him that they are going to die before the morning comes, before he has a chance to throw a baseball or trim the hedges or change a tire with that elusive man he wishes to know. _

_Suddenly the door handle rattles in place, and the family is shocked out of their trance, darting to the middle of the room and huddling together in a pack-like formation. Blaine's father begins whispering hastily and the boy strains to focus on the noise through the thick haze of fear. _

"…_will stay and distract them while you and Kadie climb up to the attic. There is a pull-down latter in the closet. Once you're up there, close the hatch in the ceiling and stay absolutely silent. Try not to move if at all possible; you're main goal is to survive, do you understand me? No matter what happens, you stay up there in that attic. You have to promise me you will do that. Do you promise, son?" _

_Blaine nods numbly, flinching as the door shakes violently in its frame. He can hear muffled voices coming from the hall and a faintly familiar crackling noise that his mind eventually connects with radio communication. Before he has a chance to pick out individual words from the mess of sounds, his mother is handing him his six year old sibling and ushering them over to the closet, pushing the two up the already positioned ladder and into the unfinished space above. _

_Blaine stares down the hole as his mother drops to the floor again and looks up at them, silent tears rolling down her pallid cheeks. He doesn't understand; why isn't she coming with them? He opens his mouth to ask but his mother quickly put a finger to her trembling lips. _

"_Do what Daddy tells you, Blaine," she calls softly, her voice nearly drowning in the cacophony of banging as the door threatens to collapse in on itself. He can just barely hear his father's grunts of exertion from holding back the overpowering force. Just then, a crash echoes through the room, and his mother gasps loudly, jolting in her place underneath. Blaine cannot see what happened, but judging by the look of frightened relief on his mother's face, he concludes that the door is not down yet, but just might be at the end of its rope with a hinge missing or something of a similar damage level. His mother looks back up at them with a renewed sense of urgency and begins to shove the ladder back up through the opening. _

_It hits him like a pail of bricks. His parents are not coming. His breath picks up rapidly and he begins to hyperventilate, leaning over the opening and grasping at the air between him and his mother as if he wanted to hoist her up himself. _

"_Look after your sister," she tells him, though her voice cracks with fear-spiked sorrow. Another gut-wrenching bang shakes the house and her head snaps to the side, her eyes widening in alarm. Two hinges down, one to go. _

"_Mom no!" he chokes as she reaches up to close the hatch door. She shushes him sharply but stops her motions, taking one long moment to stare into her child's eyes and mouth "I love you"._

_And then the hatch closes with a sickening finality and Blaine is banging his fists against the opening, crying and screaming and clawing at the panel but to no avail; she is holding it shut from below. He can hear the continued banging of the door through the insulation padding on which he is kneeling. Each explosion of sound is accompanied by a higher pitched burst, most likely the sound of the door frame snapping into tiny fragments of kindling. _

_Finally, like the long awaited finale of fireworks at each Independence Day, a blast unlike any other rocks through to the inner framework of the home, throwing Blaine onto his back and his sister to her knees. The muffled breaking of the last hinge is overpowered by a shrill, piercing keen that Blaine realizes with indescribable horror is his mother's screaming. _

_Foreign shouting erupts beneath him and dull thumps echo between the walls. Blaine grips the foam padding in his fists and shakes with muffled sobs, gritting his teeth as the sounds of his parents dissipate with time and the evidence of their struggle stops altogether. His sister is whimpering behind him and he has just enough self-restraint to pull himself together and wave her quiet again. _

_And just when he assumes it is all over, his dog—still somehow untouched from before—lets loose a long, forlorn howl. _

* * *

><p>"Blaine! Wake up!"<p>

His eyes fly open and he is gasping for air, drenched in sweat from head to toe with the side of his face pressed against the ground from where he had slumped over in sleep. He glances around and sees the familiar setting of the alley, as well as the face of the boy from before.

_No, not a boy, don't let yourself humanize him; he's a predator. Even though he might not realize it, a part of him wants to kill you. _

"Wh-what?" He stutters, peeling his face off the concrete with a grimace and sitting up. Kurt—yes, that is his name, he remembers now—is shaking him lightly, a concerned look twisting across the smooth curves of his features. It takes a moment for Blaine to register that Kurt is indeed touching him and he flinches with panic into the brick wall.

"Oh, I'm sorry! It just…it looked like you were having a nightmare, so I decided to try and wake you…" Kurt apologizes hastily, pulling his hand back with baffling shyness. Blaine blinks confusedly and forces the flurry of adrenaline to calm so he can speak.

"Um…thanks, I guess…I'm just a little, um, jumpy…is it time already?" He asks dazedly. He swallows, wincing as his throat screams in protest against the action, and his forehead burns uncomfortably with fever. The force of his sickness hits hard as the last remainder of sleep vanishes and he breathes shallowly, listening with dread to the wheeze of his lungs.

"Yes, it's been two hours. Actually, a little over two hours. Sorry I'm late; I just had a little trouble getting away from my parents. My Dad likes to lecture; I'm sure you know how that is," Kurt scoffs half-heartedly.

"No, actually. I don't know how that is."

"…oh…I'm—I'm sorry…"

Blaine lifts himself off the ground and attempts to dust off his clothing, but it seems nothing can break the film-like barrier of filth so he gives up and lets his arms drop to his sides. Kurt takes a step back, giving Blaine ample space in order to feel comfortable, and points the light of his phone near Blaine's feet.

"The sweatshirt," he says simply, nodding to where the pile of fabric lay in a pile next to the dumpster. Blaine plucks it from the ground and slips it over his shoulders, holding back a sigh of relief from the way the soft, clean material slides against his skin. He yanks up the zipper and pulls the hood over his matted curls, feeling warmer than he can remember in the past few weeks, and stuffs his hands in the deep, fleece-lined pockets.

"Okay," he says, inhaling deeply the scent of vanilla dryer sheets from the inside of the hood. He knows he shouldn't allow himself to feel so relaxed, but he can't help it; his body seems to be decompressing of its own accord. "Okay, I'm ready."

Kurt smiles cautiously at him and begins to make his way to the mouth of the alley, slowly enough for Blaine to catch up to his side. Relaxed or not, Blaine still feels himself tense as his shoulder accidentally brushes Kurt's and every nerve in his body shouts warnings at their close proximity, urging him to put as much distance between him and the mysteriously compassionate being as possible. Kurt notices his movement and turns to him just before they reach the edge of the light from the streetlamp.

"I don't want to be insensitive," Kurt begins, his voice strained with a guilty reluctance, "but if this is going to work, you have to calm down a little. Act like you're supposed to be here. Look casual. You know?"

Blaine swallows and winces, clenching and unclenching his hands nervously. "O-okay. I'll try."

Kurt's lips press together solemnly and he allows Blaine a few moments of preparation before they step out into the street, Blaine's eyes pounding from the sudden exposure to brightness. Once he adjusts, he finds his gaze flickering around on a three-sixty swivel, gathering information about the scene around him in small, unsatisfying bites. He wants nothing more than to take a long moment to observe his situation, but as Kurt had told him, he needs to stay collected. If he acts like a fugitive, others will see him as one.

Behind him, three people—_not people, sentient creatures_—are walking in the opposite direction, chatting and holding steaming cups of what smells like coffee, but the scent is a bit off. To his right, a street vendor sits inattentively in his newsstand, peddling the latest gossip that he himself probably has not glanced at, unlike the wad of bills no doubt folded carefully in his register beneath his twiddling fingers. Ahead of him, the sidewalk stretches emptily up the road and turns sharply left, disappearing behind the corner of a multistoried building that looks like it had been formerly used as office space but turned residential.

"Is that where you live?" Blaine asks, his eyes still darting around defensively. He feels extremely uncomfortable under the glare of the streetlights, almost naked without the cover of darkness that had offered so much protection. In the distance, he hears Kurt scoff.

"What, there? Oh no. No, I live in a much nicer area. Actually, if I were to be _really_ blunt about it, we're standing in what is informally considered to be the slums of the city. You're actually pretty fortunate to have picked this place to hide out; not many would suspect you were human at first glance. There are so many homeless people in this area, most would just assume you were one of them and keep their distance."

Blaine blinks once and his face darkens with a sick realization. "Well, I guess I am lucky. Lucky that nobody from your species has the heart to help out someone in need."

"Hey, don't blame me." Kurt retorts lightly. "It's safer to stay away. Those who are homeless have a sixty percent higher chance of displaying the beginning signs of subsider activity. I mean, it's common sense, really. If you have no money to pay for food, you starve, and then you lose your mind. And recently, there's been a spike in unemployment ratings because so many farming companies are going out of business so…" Kurt trails off as he sees the expression on Blaine's features change at the last sentence, shifting from cynical doubt to heartbreaking sadness like the flick of a switch.

"I'm sorry," Kurt says quietly. "I shouldn't have mentioned that."

Blaine shakes his head and clears his face to a neutral stare. "No, it's okay. It's your way of life, I guess. Even though it's wrong."

Kurt doesn't have any response so he beckons to Blaine with his hand and starts walking, glancing at the shorter boy occasionally as they cross intersections and pass street corners, noticing how uncomfortable Blaine looks under the unseen scrutiny of the city lights.

Eventually they make their way out of the slums and into the more densely populated commercial areas. Blaine can feel every pump of his heartbeat through the sweat-soaked frays of his shirt and his senses scream chaotically in his brain as every sight and sound swims electrically through the live wires of his conscience. Kurt seems perfectly at ease next to him, but every now and again he notices him glance around at the surrounding population and scan the faces of those who pass by, watching for the faintest flicker of realization in their blank, glassy eyes.

"Kurt, a-are we almost there?" Blaine whispers frantically as a one of them walks within five inches of his right side. He fights back a yelp at the cold rush of air that hits his face and the panic that floods down from his hairline.

"A few more blocks and then we're there," Kurt replies evenly.

They pass by another vendor, but this time it is not a newsstand and the same coffee smell from before assaults Blaine's nostrils. Again, the scent registers weirdly in his mind and he turns his gaze towards the kiosk, slightly shocked by the large line that has formed behind the counter.

He remembers coffee from back when the world was normal; He can recall the way each brew would fill up his kitchen with its rich, wafting flavor, how every morning during the week his mother would make a pot just for him and he would come bounding down the stairs like a child on Christmas morning for that first mug, dumping in teaspoon after teaspoon of cream and sugar until his mother would stop him with a loving, reproachful smirk.

The smell of this coffee, though, troubles him. It has almost a metallic edge to it that he cannot place and he studies those of them drinking it, how after each gulp their lips come back stained with a red residue that they lap up greedily with their tongues, just like he used to do with the foamy remnants of marshmallows in his hot chocolate years and years ago. His stomach drops to his feet and he nearly doubles over, reaching out and clutching Kurt's shoulder without a second thought.

_You will not get sick, you will NOT get sick…_

"Blaine? Blaine what's wrong?"

He can't respond because, in that moment, his eyes lock onto the packets of blood behind the counter of the kiosk and time lurches to a stop. He sees the cheerful attendants dishing out cup after cup to each eager patron, sees the way they add the doses of human life source into every drink as if it were nothing more than a shot of espresso.

"I need…to get away from here," Blaine croaks, speeding up his pace significantly in order to pass quicker. He can't take this. He can't take this at all.

"Hey—_hey! _Blaine, wait! Stop." Kurt calls after him, chasing Blaine through the crowd until they reach the end of the block. Blaine slumps against the street sign, teetering heavily on the verge of tears.

"Blaine, what happened?" Kurt asks, unsure of whether or not he should pry but deciding to chance it all the same. Blaine doesn't reply at first, simply shakes his head again, trying to calm himself before anyone notices. Already he can see a few passers-by throwing him faintly alarmed glances, and he prays feverishly that they don't look too closely, prays that they don't see the hot flush of his cheeks or the non-existent glimmer of his hazel irises.

"I…I just wasn't prepared for that," Blaine coughs out between shuddering breaths. "It's one thing to hear about it but it's another to actually _see_…"

Kurt nods in understanding and waits patiently for Blaine to regain the hold on his emotions. After a minute, Blaine stands straight again and clears his throat, securing the hood around his face before turning to Kurt.

"How much farther?" he asks bluntly. Kurt looks over his head at something behind him, raising his brows a fraction of an inch upwards.

"Actually, we're here."

Blaine spins around on his heel and comes face to face with a glass encased building, so tall it seems to touch the few stars that remain in the sky despite the grand city lights that chased the rest away. Each pane in the giant grid of windows reflects back the landscape of buildings neighboring it as well as the life on the street below, and Blaine can suddenly see the image of his face in the mirror-like exterior. He can't remember ever looking so ragged, so covered in slime-like grit he very nearly passes himself off as a stranger.

"God, I need a shower," he breathes, his fingers brushing across a hardened on clump of soot stuck to his left cheek.

"Yeaah," Kurt drawls, ambling over to the front doors of the apartment complex and pulling them open, ushering Blaine inside with a flick of his wrist. "After you."

"Thanks…" Blaine responds quietly and slips inside.

The lobby is almost obnoxiously ornate, not classically decorated, of course, but rather in the art-deco style which almost every building has come to adopt in an attempt to look classier. Blaine follows Kurt to one of the spacious elevators and waits nervously for one to reach the main floor, glancing around at the front desk workers who type tirelessly away at their computers, their uniforms impeccably clean and lint-free. Blaine looks down at himself for a second, grimacing at how unkempt he looks in comparison. If not for Kurt's sweatshirt, he would stick out like a sore thumb.

The quiet ping of the elevator shocks him out of his reverie and he almost jumps inside after Kurt, sending up silent strings of thanks when the cab arrives empty. Kurt presses the button for the twelfth floor and they ascend in an awkward silence, unsure of what to say and settling on nothing at all.

Once the doors open again Kurt strides confidently down the hallway while Blaine struggles to keep up, almost plowing into the taller boy's—_see Blaine, now you're doing it again, don't become attached _—back as he comes to a halt in front of apartment eighteen-oh-four. Kurt slips his hand into the pocket of his designer slacks and retrieves a small, silver key, inserting it into the lock just above the handle and turning it with a click.

Just like the entrance to the lobby, Kurt pulls open the door and stands aside for Blaine to pass.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Okaaay, so this one turned out A LOT longer than I had anticipated, haha. I'm sort of loving this story and for the first time in forever, I actually have a plot-line somewhat planned out in my head, so yay! Anyway, next chapter will pick up immediately after this and Blaine will start to learn how to trust people again. Please feel free to give feedback and review, it really inspires me to write more!**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Okay, so I am totally into this story now you guys :) I literally can't stop thinking about it. **

**Anyway, this chapter starts in Kurt's point of view again. I'm not sure whether or not I'm going to do like an alternating pattern with the POV's but I **_**will**_** have to switch back to Blaine when I tell his back-story, so we'll see. **

* * *

><p>Kurt sits patiently on the steel gray sectional in his living room, inspecting his nail cuticles casually while he waits for the sound of running water to stop from the bathroom down the hall. He tries not to let his mind stray too far from the present because then he'd start thinking about <em>why<em> he is doing all this and how crazy it is if thought about realistically. Sure, there's no law against secretly harboring humans in your city loft-apartment, but he is more than certain that it's something heavily frowned upon and possibly punishable by_ some_ form of law, his parents included.

He just can't get over why he feels the overwhelming need to help this boy.

Finding an un-captured human dead center in what is probably considered to be one of the most highly concentrated areas of vampires in the United States is nothing short of a miracle. Not for said human, obviously; it's more of a hellish nightmare. But just the sheer magnitude of Kurt's discovery leaves him a little short of lightheaded, and he can't shake off the feeling that he's neck deep in a very serious situation. Maybe even a very _dangerous_ situation. Because if anyone finds out what, or in this case, _who_ he's hiding…

But all of those thoughts fly unceremoniously out the window as the pattering sound of the shower cuts off and Kurt is plummeted back to earth.

A few minutes of silence pass before there is the quiet click of an opening door as Blaine steps out from the bathroom and into the living area. Kurt turns his head slowly to acknowledge his guest's presence, only looking away from his nails when his face makes the full rotation.

And _wow_…

Kurt blinks in confusion. Is this really the same boy he pulled off the streets a few hours ago? Blaine's hair is freshly washed and towel dried, the loose curls sweeping gently across the smooth skin of his forehead which, impressively, is clean and void of any of the previous buildup of grime. Without the filth, Kurt can see the chiseled cuts of Blaine's curving jawbone, the handsome beauty of the feature marred slightly by the fact that the boy's malnutrition is only more noticeable from behind the layer of grit.

"You need to eat," he comments lightly, but his eyes can't stray away from the shocking transformation, like Blaine had removed a gruesome mask to reveal charming, masculine artistry.

Blaine stands self consciously in place, glancing uneasily around the apartment like he had when he first entered, almost as if he suspects there to have been an ambush planned while he'd let down his defenses. Kurt feels a pang of sadness at Blaine's distrust and holds up his hands to assuage the boy's fears.

"Hey, no need to worry, okay? I don't have anything up my sleeve. Well, actually that's not true; I have a _gorgeous _silver-platedArmani watch, but that's beside the point. You can trust me."

The two lock gazes and Kurt tries his best to put as much sincerity as he can muster into his eyes, begging silently for the timid boy to listen to him, even just a little. Much to Kurt's immense relief, Blaine seems to thaw a bit and his shoulders relax ever so slightly from their hunched position.

"Okay…" Blaine murmurs, his gaze shifting around one last time before coming to a permanent stop on Kurt, who stares at him unwaveringly in return. As much as Kurt tries, he can't stop from congratulating himself on the clothing choice; for some reason, the forest green muscle tee and loose skinny jeans he let Blaine borrow _really_ compliment his ivory skin tone as well as his moderately muscled build. It's almost—no, Kurt won't say it, he won't...but he can't hold the word back—_attractive_.

Not almost, it's _definitely_ attractive.

Kurt blinks a few times more and dispels the thought.

"So, uh, food…right."

Kurt leads the way into the kitchen, giving Blaine a pointed look as an invitation to follow when his guest stands statuesque in his spot. They make their way over to the refrigerator, and Blaine steps quickly back when Kurt yanks open the door to reveal shelves stocked with surprisingly ordinary items, though there's a lot of it, and Blaine's stomach responds predictably.

"Sorry," he says, mildly embarrassed. He wraps his arms around his rumbling torso and looks to his feet, a small hint of red growing across the pale stretch of his cheekbones. Kurt swallows reflexively, trying to ignore the instinctual draw of Blaine's reaction, and he stops the flow of air through his nose. A sudden, anxious feeling overcomes him as he realizes how risky this is, not just for him but for Blaine as well. But Blaine's expression distracts him, the boy's eyes glinting hungrily at the stockpile of food, the tip of his tongue flicking out to wet the dry plump of his bottom lip.

"Don't worry about it," Kurt says in response, giving a small smile. The red fades from Blaine's cheeks and Kurt lets out a silent sigh of relief. "You must be absolutely famished. Help yourself to whatever you want."

Blaine's expression lightens despite his nervousness, and Kurt grins happily as the boy reaches tentatively into the fridge, pulling out an apple and two cheese sticks. For a moment, Kurt's grin falters—_surely he must be more hungry than _that_, right?—_but then Blaine quietly asks, "Do you mind if I start out with this and go back for more? I don't think my body would react well if I just started stuffing my face after a week or so of nothing…"

Kurt eyes him warmly. "Sure, no problem. Have as much as you like. Actually, since you're eating, I might just have a little snack myself."

Silence.

Blaine drops his food. His face blanches and his skin pales to a deathly white.

Kurt's eyebrows shoot up in surprise, barely noticing when the newly bruised apple rolls and hits the tread of his shoe. "What's wrong?" he asks anxiously, leaning forward and subconsciously stretching out his arm in questioning. Blaine's breath hitches in his throat and he backs away, his lips suddenly cracked and dry and his eyes wide and staring.

"Hey, what did I say?"

"Don't touch me," Blaine whispers, his chest rising and falling frantically. He breaks his gaze from Kurt for half a second to search for a safe exit, but there is none. Kurt can see the raw fear in his eyes, can almost hear the panicked thoughts screaming through his head, '_get out, get out now!'_. He's not sure exactly what he did wrong, but suddenly his mind conducts a quick replay, his words echoing loudly in his mind as if the universe were trying to personally point out his mistake.

Oh. That's why.

"_Wait! Wait wait,_ _that's not what I meant!_" Kurt exclaims, his eyes widening in diameter to match Blaine's. Blaine stops retreating for a moment, but the fright does not leave his face and his breath refuses to slow. Kurt can just hear the rapid beating of his heart through his t-shirt and he winces at how callous he had just been, how carelessly he had caused this boy to distrust him again. These kinds of frequent shocks to the system couldn't possibly be doing anything to help Blaine's health either, and Kurt fights to restrain the onslaught of guilt and the urge to face-palm.

"I would never…I'm not going to…t-to _eat_ you—oh god, that sounds so _stupid_!" Kurt groans, just barely managing to stop himself from running his fingers through his hair and ruining his perfect coif. Could the awkward tension in the room get _any_ more pronounced? He tries to break through the veil of frustration and figure out how to fix the little disaster, even though a very, _very_ small voice in his head reminds him of what Blaine's blush had looked like to him, how enticing it had been, how warm it had looked, how _appetizing…_

_No!_

"Look," Kurt begins soothingly, but his wince taints the effect. "I promise that, as long as you're with me, you're safe. I won't hurt you and I won't put you in danger. But, I'm not forcing you to be here, either. You can come and go as you please—even though that sounds a little unwise, honestly—but it's not my right to decide things for you. I'm just here to help, I swear."

A long time passes of nothing but Blaine's strained breathing and Kurt's pleading gaze. It almost seems like each second comes and passes slower at each tick of the clock, and Kurt resists the urge to growl in frustration. He isn't irritated with Blaine; he's irritated with himself, at the whole situation, at the _world. _None of this would be necessary if the plague had never come to be. Everything seems to be in perfect, working order, but really the planet is just one massive, chaotic mess disguised by a mocking impersonation of organization. And he's angry about it for the first time in his life.

"…fine…" Blaine whispers and a small blush creeps onto his cheeks again. Kurt glances to the side uncomfortably until it fades. When he looks back, Blaine is grimacing sheepishly and bending to the floor to retrieve the dropped food.

"I…I just freaked out over nothing, didn't I?" the boy mutters as his fingers curl around the cheese sticks. Kurt reaches for the apple since it is closest to him, his face tilting up from the floor to stare into Blaine's thoroughly embarrassed eyes.

"I would've done the exact same thing if I were in your position, trust me," he replies. Blaine holds his hand out for the apple but Kurt places it on the counter instead and walks back to the fridge. "Don't worry, I'll get you a new one; you don't have to eat it when it's all bruised and nasty."

Blaine gives a small grateful smile. "I feel like I'm going through a violent lifestyle whiplash," he comments shyly, staring down at the floor. Kurt turns with the fresh fruit in hand and lifts his eyebrow, shutting the door of the fridge with the heel of his foot.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, less than five hours ago I was rummaging through dumpsters for my next meal and now all of a sudden I'm eating like a king. I'm half convinced that right now I'm still back in that alley dreaming."

Kurt smirks outwardly but inside a part of him breaks with pity. He suddenly feels very spoiled standing in his custom made kitchen, surrounded by luxuries and amenities to which he normally wouldn't spare a second thought. Blaine has probably experienced more horrors and hardships in the last few years than Kurt would in his entire lifetime. He wordlessly hands the new apple to Blaine and heads over to the pantry to choose something for himself.

"You can have a seat, if you like," Kurt calls, his eyes still roaming the shelves. He doesn't want to eat more than Blaine—he would just feel more guilty—so he settles on a small box of low-fat rice cakes. Normally, he would dip the cardboard-like cakes in a tall glass of O-negative for more flavor, but he has a feeling that Blaine would be a_ little_ more than unsettled if he tried.

As he closes the door, he hears the soft noise of Blaine settling into couch cushions in the room over.

Kurt strolls into the living and joins Blaine on the couch, sitting on the opposite end to ensure a comfortable distance.

"So," he begins, popping a rice cake into his mouth. _Oh dear god, these things are disgusting_, he thinks, and places the box on the glass, oval-cut coffee table. "Are you feeling a little better? How's the fever?"

Blaine looks up from a small bite of cheese. The way he's holding his snack, reverently like it's a precious jewel, stabs at Kurt in a way that he doesn't quite know how to handle.

"…about the same, I think," Blaine replies softy. The paleness of his cheeks does nothing to soothe Kurt's worries, and he briefly considers reaching over to place a hand on the boy's forehead to gauge his temperature. However, he knows how delicate Blaine is at the moment, and unwanted physical contact might send his nerves over the edge, so he decides against it.

Kurt clears his throat at the heavy silence. "Ahem, so, um…my parents get back around six-thirty so that gives us just about…" he checks his watch. "Just about seven hours to kill—_er,_ I mean to _waste_…" Kurt grits his teeth against the inner dialogue of insults his conscience seems to eagerly throw at him. _What the hell do you think you're doing? Do you _want_ to send him running? God, how many times can you unknowingly throw carnal subliminal messages at the poor boy before he cracks?_

"Oh, okay." Blaine replies, his face twisted slightly in nervous confusion at Kurt's pained expression.

"We have to figure out what's going to happen before they get home," Kurt continues, recovering from his guilt-spree. "I mean, it's obvious that they can't know you're here."

Blaine's eyes fill with fear and his brows shoot up in surprise. "T-they can't?"

"No, I'm afraid not. My family probably wouldn't react well to, er…well, to _you_. Unfortunately, they don't think the same way I do. You see, my parents are…pretty sheltering." Kurt settles for the nicest of explanations and shrugs as he lets his words marinate, as if 'sheltering' explains just about everything. Blaine doesn't seem to understand, so Kurt clarifies.

"They don't want me getting into any trouble and, well, you're sort of…troubling."

"Oh…"

"Yeah…I mean, to be honest, if someone found out I was harboring a human," Kurt frowns at how impersonal he sounds, "There's no doubt you would be turned in immediately, and I would be up shit creek without a paddle. There's no set consequence for what I'm doing, but I'm sure our city authority would come up with _something, _and my Mom and Dad would have a conniption. So, for now and for both our sakes, we have to keep this a secret."

Blaine's face twists with conflict. "The way you're putting it…it sounds like you expect me to stay for a while."

Kurt blanches for a moment with realization and them immediately backtracks, his hands flurrying anxiously. "_Oh_, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to…I wasn't trying to decide things for you…I mean, you can stay as long as you want, I—I just sort of assumed you would stay until you got better, at least…" he trails off, his eyes dropping down to his lap where his thumbs unendingly fiddle.

"But…how would you not get caught?" Blaine asks quietly.

"That's a good question. That's why I have to figure this out sooner rather than later. I need a plan." Kurt says more to himself than to Blaine, tapping his thumbnail against his teeth as he drowns himself in thought.

Blaine stares at Kurt from across the couch, his emotions swirling around in a dangerous whirlpool of contradiction. If he takes Kurt's offer to rest here for a few days, he'll be able recover and get well enough to go back out and continue his original mission, the reason he came to the city in the first place. He needs the energy; there's no chance he can survive in his current state out on the streets. It would only be a matter of time before the hunger or the thirst got to him, or he was discovered by somebody much less accepting and compassionate than Kurt.

But _if_ he did take the offer, he'd be putting not only himself in danger, but Kurt as well.

He feels like he's being split in half. His mind is saying, _don't do it; it's too much of a risk; if it doesn't end well it's not just _you're_ ass on the line this time; don't be so selfish, Blaine._

His body retorts, _are you kidding? You're going to pass up the offer of days worth of free food, showers, and comfortable rest just for the sake of a blood-sucker? I'm _hungry_, dammit!_

"I have an idea." Kurt pipes up suddenly, breaking Blaine away from his reverie. "If you do choose to stay, I can set up a cot in my walk-in closet. Neither my parents nor my brother would ever _dare_ to go in there; _apparently_ I guard my clothing with a passion that borders insanity. You can sleep in there for the time being—and hide there when my parents are home—while you recover and you can shower during the day when everyone is away…or during the _night_, rather; sorry, I guess _my _night and day constitute two different things than yours."

Blaine nods at this sentiment, his mind flashing back to when he first entered the city during the daylight, how the streets had lain bare and empty under the beating sun and the air had hung saturated with an unearthly quiet. The plague seemed to have reversed time itself.

"I know what you mean," he says, shaking off the eerie mental picture. The plan seems _somewhat_ solid; he supposes maybe…maybe he could stay for a day or two? Three at the _most_? Just until he got better enough to continue what he'd first started…

He swears to himself that he won't cause any trouble. When the entire family is home, he'll sit in the closet and not make a single peep. He'll try to not even _breathe _loudly. He'll be like a human statue; unmoving and unnoticeable. It'll be fine. And when his stay is over, he'll go on his way and never bother Kurt again, never involve his benevolent caretaker—_there you go again, you have to stop that—_ in his worries.

At least, that's what Blaine promises himself.

But before he agrees, he wants to learn more about Kurt's situation and what it would entail for himself. He deserves to know what kind of household he's going to be intruding upon—even if it _is _secretly.

"You said you had a brother, right?" he asks as he finishes the second cheese stick and moves to take the first bite out of the apple. His teeth sink in with a satisfying crunch and the inside of his mouth practically explodes from the sweet flavor. Kurt's answer flies right over his head as he is momentarily distracted, and suddenly his brain is recapping every instance where he had to eat from a dumpster, wondering how he'd ever managed to do something like that when fresh food like this had graced his taste buds before.

"Sorry, what was that?" he says after a moment when his gaze refocuses. He's slightly shocked to see the look in Kurt's eyes; it's…_sad_. Broken. Blaine doesn't know what to think.

Kurt refocuses and his face returns to its previous position of calm. "He's, um, not actually my _brother_, per se. He's my step brother. My dad remarried after…after my mom died…"

"Oh," Blaine replies lamely. "I'm sorry."

"It's fine," Kurt says, his eyes shifting to his feet. "She passed a long time ago. My dad married Carol just before the plague hit, but I knew Finn from my high school. He was the quarterback for the football team."

Blaine's a bit off-put by the edge in Kurt's voice at the mention of 'quarterback'. It makes him curious. Which, in his mind, is not good. Because curiosity means you are getting comfortable. And he can't afford to be comfortable. But try as he may, he can't stop himself from asking questions, even though his conscience chides him for his lack of anxiety.

"You don't like him?"

Kurt narrows his eyes and for a moment Blaine becomes tense, afraid that he's hit the wrong button, afraid that Kurt's taken offense, afraid that there are consequences that follow. But then Kurt relaxes with a heavy sigh, and shakes his head.

"No, it's not that. It's the whole…football-popularity thing. Finn's nice enough, it's just…the whole social hierarchy thing really did a number on me back then…I just—I'd rather not talk about it, if that's okay."

Blaine blinks. "Er, no problem…"

The silence that follows is a bit awkward so Blaine takes another bite of his apple, closing his eyes as he relishes the taste.

"Okay, you've got to stop that." Kurt pleads.

Blaine's eyes shoot open again. "W…what?" he asks confusedly, glancing nervously at Kurt as though he is about to be reprimanded. Kurt has the same saddened look in his eyes and Blaine is left to decipher it amongst all of his other muddled thoughts.

"I swear, when you eat like that, it makes me want to cry," Kurt says softly, his face a bit sheepish but his eyes glistening with moisture. "You look so starved and…gosh I'm such a drama queen, I'm sorry…"

Blaine's gaze ping-pongs between the apple in his hand and Kurt's mortified expression, and suddenly another question pops out of his mouth of its own accord, a question he's wanted answered for a while now that's nagged at him constantly, probably the most important question of them all.

"Why do you care so much? Why are you helping me? You're different from everyone else in this city…why is that? What are _you_ getting out of all this?"

The inquiry tumbles from his lips in almost an accusatory tone, and Kurt flinches ever so slightly in his seat, glancing up with unsteady, _unsure_ eyes that stab Blaine with a fortuitous sensation he'd never felt before. It's a little alarming, as though a sudden switch is flicked in his brain for half a second before switching back to the same position in which it started, flashing a dizzyingly bright light before plunging everything into the same gray monotones as before.

And…he _saw_ something in that brief moment. He saw color and_ life_ and he felt that elusive glimmer of _warmth_ that has evaded him for years, felt his heart stutter out of something other than fear, something much, much kinder and gentler…

But it's gone, and he doesn't have the time to dissect it before Kurt begins to respond, his golden opalescent eyes directed down at his lap.

_Why can't you get a deep breath? Why can't you stop staring? _

Blaine can't answer.

"I…I honestly don't know." Kurt admits meekly, wiping away the residual moisture still trapped in his lower lashes. "I know I told you I missed being human before—and that wasn't a lie—but…I can't tell if that's the only reason."

Blaine has to strain his ears slightly as Kurt trails off, his soft voice disappearing into the quiet, wavering with uncertainty and vulnerability. There's another flash similar to the first one, but this time it lingers, smoldering in Blaine's chest before dimming out and extinguishing like a slowly dying ember on the end of a candle wick.

"Well…no matter the reason," Blaine begins, waiting until Kurt looks up so they can lock gazes, so he can be sincere and honest. "Thank you. For everything. I don't know what would have come of me if you hadn't found me. I owe you my life."

"You don't owe me anything. In fact, I probably owe _you_. It was my race that did this to you. People like me…they shouldn't be hunting you. It's cruel. And the horrible thing is, most of us don't even think about it. We just go on with our everyday lives as though what they're doing—the farming companies—is the most natural thing in the world."

Before the sensible part of his brain can stop him, Blaine opens his mouth to speak. "Hey, don't go blaming yourself for the mistakes of others. It's not your burden to carry."

_What are you talking about? He _should _be apologizing to you. _He's_ indifferent to all of it too, Blaine. Of _course_ it's his burden to carry. He's one of them. Why are you letting yourself forget that?_

His conscience nags him relentlessly, but he just…can't. He can't bring himself to blame Kurt for all that's happened to him. Subconsciously, he certainly _trying_ to. But…

Blaine has already established a personal hatred for Kurt's…_species_? _Race_? What would one name a pack of monstrous demons? He's already taken out several vendettas against the CEO's of the farming companies, against all levels of authority. In his mind, their faces are dark and twisted with malice, wrinkled and ugly with evil so deeply ingrained it's practically embedded in their cells. That is the connection he makes when he thinks of these porcelain-like beings.

When he looks at Kurt, though, that connection doesn't spark. When he looks upon the distinct, yet soft curves of his face—_when did you notice _that_?_—and the curious glimmer that flickers in the deep chasms of his irises—_really now Blaine? Chasms_?_ What's happening to you?_—he's see's no menace. No blackness. Only innocence. Kindness.

It's as refreshing as it is unnerving.

"Ready for some more?" Kurt asks after a while. Blaine furrows his brows in confusion but then sees Kurt looking at the fruit resting in his fingers. He glances down to find the apple bitten nearly down to the core. He can't remember eating it that fast.

"Sure," Blaine replies. Kurt gives him a smile and the tension evaporates. The two of them stand and make their way into the kitchen.

* * *

><p>The rest of the day passes in a blur. As much as Blaine tries to stay on his guard, he catches himself slipping into a state of relaxation, of ease. He accidentally falls asleep on the couch, a box of Ritz crackers cradled in his arms and a bottle of Gatorade at his side. Kurt wakes him after a few hours to give him some hot soup, saying that Blaine was coughing non-stop in his slumber and the heat should alleviate the discomfort in his throat. Immediately, the ever shrinking voice in Blaine's head scolds him for his ineptitude, his callousness.<p>

But as the hours roll by, as the day—or _night_—settles in, the voice that fuels the distrust and the trepidation in Blaine's heart slowly disintegrates until it is no longer a cause for annoyance.

"I think I'd better get you set up in the closet soon," Kurt calls from the living room. Blaine is helping himself to a bag of peanuts from the pantry and he looks up in response, his eyes flickering to the giant wall clock that hangs in the kitchen like a three-dimensional mural. It's six o' clock. Time is starting to catch up with him, and a bubble of anxiety forms in his stomach.

What if he's caught? What if Kurt's family finds him? What if they send him to a farm?

No. He can't let him think like that. Not now, anyways. He has to be confident in his choices. If he second guesses himself, he's far more likely to slip up and make a mistake.

Kurt guides Blaine to his room, a part of the residence Blaine hasn't seen yet. He'd spent almost all of his time in the kitchen, living room, and occasionally–when nature came calling—the bathroom since he'd been there and it is a shock to him to find Kurt's room so ornately decorated when the rest of the home seems so minimalistic and stream-line.

Kurt's bed is positioned in the middle of the far left wall, facing the floor-to-ceiling windows that are adorned with grey, metallic drapery. A stark white shag carpet pops against the dark chocolate brown of the flooring—the wood almost looks like teak—and a high backed, lion footed chair rests on top it, its golden-flecked upholstery glinting in the light from a nearby lamp that is designed to be almost like a modern take on a candelabra. Simple white shelving units line the rest of the walls, but the objects that fill them bring the room to an entirely different level of class and sophistication, for each trinket and trophy and showcase looks hand-polished and highly valuable in their tastefully staged positions.

"Wow…you have a nice room," Blaine says quietly.

"I know," Kurt replies a bit cheekily, smirking to himself. The closet door faces them from the opposite wall and Kurt steps over to it agilely. Blaine can't help but stare at the sinuous movement in an odd sort of mesmerized appreciation. He can't remember seeing a boy be so graceful.

The walk in closet is huge. And yet, despite its size, clothes still seem to be overflowing from every crevasse in the space. A rainbow of colors explode from every hook, drawer, and cubby, and Blaine finds himself emitting a small chuckle at how Kurt's face lightens at the sight of his massive collection, almost like a small child at a candy store.

A twin sized air mattress lies in the middle of the floor, fitted with cream colored sheets and a down comforter that matches the wood beneath. A few plush pillows sit at the foot of the mattress along with an extra fleece blanket.

"Do you snore?" Kurt asks.

Blaine shakes his head.

"Good. Then we have nothing to worry about."

A few seconds of silence pass as Blaine surveys his surroundings. He's not usually one to get emotional—at least, since the plague hit—but suddenly he finds a lump crawling into his throat and feels his eyes begin to sting.

"Kurt," He begins, turning to the boy. _Yes, he's a boy. He's a person. How could someone like him not have a soul?_ "I can't even…_begin_ to thank you for what you're doing. For what you've done already. You…You're truly one of the most kindhearted people I've met. I wish there was some way I could repay you for all of this, but…"

"Don't worry about it," Kurt says, waving him away. "Just make yourself comfortable. If you need anything, I'll be visiting my room pretty frequently so you can just ask."

"Thank you."

Kurt smiles warmly. Then, as if on cue, there is a faint rattling sound from outside Kurt's room. Both boys' heads turn at once to the noise, but their reactions to it are polar opposite. Blaine freezes, his muscles tightening with panic and fear. Kurt regards the noise with a comfortable sense of familiarity, as if it were routine. A few moments later, a low squelching signals the opening of the front door, and Kurt exits his room quickly, leaving Blaine to retreat into the closet and shut the door behind him.

He can just make out the muffled sounds of voices from behind the door.

"Hey Kurt!"

"Hi Dad, hi Carol."

"So how was your day, son?"

The air stills in Blaine's lungs as he waits for the answer, waits for his fate to be decided for him. It's almost torturous the way Kurt pauses for a half second too long, and even as unnoticeable as the pause is, Blaine can sense the hesitation, the uncertainty.

"Uneventful. Pretty boring." Kurt replies nonchalantly.

Blaine lets out a heavy breath and leans back against the wall, pulling his fingers through his untamed, curly locks. _Thank god_, he thinks. He tunes out the rest of the mundane conversation and just breathes.

He's in the clear. For now at least.

After he allows the nerves to settle in his stomach, he grabs one of the pillows in his calloused hands, marveling at the soft, feathery texture of the fabric before resting his head in the cushion and sprawling out on his side on the mattress. His tired back moans in relief and he lets his eyelids succumb to gravity, feeling the heaviness of sleep fall upon him almost immediately. He welcomes the warmth, the darkness, and he slowly begins to lose himself under the curtain of unconsciousness.

And he dreams.

* * *

><p><em>He's running—or at least attempting to run. His feet feel like dead weights, and they drag uselessly along the heat tortured pavement. He's so, so tired. More tired than he's ever been. He's never run so much, never had so much adrenaline pump through his body at once. He feels like he could collapse at any time. But of course, he <em>can't. _Unless he wants to die. _

_He doesn't know who it is who's chasing him. He doesn't know what happened to his sister. All he knows is the hollow slap of his converse against the ground, the scorching, suffocating heat of the sunlight glancing off the sweat-slicked plane of his forehead. _

_He thought he'd be safe during the daytime. They didn't come outside then. It was at night when he had to exercise caution, when he had to slink through the shadows and duck behind buildings. Not now. Not when the light was shining so relentlessly from the sky. _

_But now they wore full-body suits. They'd had special equipment, special armor. At some time, they'd learned the advantages of daytime hunting and adapted as needed. It left Blaine defenseless. Vulnerable. Constantly frightened beyond belief. _

_And constant stress takes a toll on one's energy, no matter how tough or resilient they may be._

_He can hear them gaining behind him. They're slower with all of the UV-blocking metal, but they're steady and fit and their pace does not falter. Blaine attempts to side track them by jumping fences and weaving through the maze of his suburban streets, but they keep up just the same. He can't shake them. He's doomed. _

_And then a sound hits him like a bucket of bricks; a voice screams out from somewhere he can't see._

"BLAAAAAIIIINE!"

_He immediately recognizes it as his sister, and a rush of determination floods his cells. He picks up his pace, doubling back towards the source of the noise, and eventually finds himself in front of his house. The front door is broken down and the windows are shattered. The shutters lie in small heaps at the foundation and the ones that remain hanging are crooked and skewed. _

"BLAAINE!"

_He bounds across the front lawn and bursts through the entrance. _

_And then his heart stops. _

_His blood drains to the soles of his feet. _

_They have her. They have his sister._

_A _huge_ crowd of them are gathered in his foyer, surrounding the little girl in a semi-circle. Five of them are restraining her tiny, thrashing frame while the others simply watch and stand off to the side. One seems just about ready to pull the trigger on his tranquilizer, but another seems more hesitant. Blaine gapes openly at the conversation in front of him._

"_It's a juvenile, so wouldn't the dosage be different? I'm just saying, it would be unfortunate for us to overdose it and lose all the potential blood. The general said to preserve the young ones as best as possible."_

"_Yes, but the general isn't here. We can't just shove it in the back of the truck _awake_, now can we? And I don't have time to adjust the dosage; I have a deadline to meet. We'll just have to hope that it wakes up in the end."_

_Blaine stands frozen in horror at the scene. None of them have noticed him yet; all of their gazes are locked on his little sister. The terror on her face is immeasurable and the rims of her eyes overflow with tears. Her body quivers and her captors have to yank her up by her shoulders so she doesn't fall to the floor. _

"…_Fine, I guess. Just get it over with; it's starting to make a scene."_

_Blaine can't control his limbs. He can't move. He can't breathe. He can't do _anything_. _

_His heartbeat begins to measure the time. _

_One…Two…Three…_

Tfff!

_The sound of air expelling the shaft of the gun wakes him from his trance. But it is too late. The damage has been done. His sister gives one last whimper before falling slack, her eyes rolling back and closing with sleep, her legs dangling awkwardly from where the monster is holding her up. _

_Finally, some part of him jumpstarts, and his vocal cords spring into action again. _

"HEY!" _he screams. Every single body in the room turns to him and there is a pause, a heavy hesitation. _

_And then, all hell breaks loose. _

"_GET HIM! NOW NOW NOW!"_

_His poor, battered body does what only what it is programmed to do in situations like these. _

_He turns away and he _runs.

_And he doesn't look back to see the face of his sister one last time before he turns the corner and leaves his suburb forever. _

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Wowww that was longer than I expected it would be! Anyway, please review! If you do, you are officially awesome :D... No seriously, review. **_  
><em>


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Okay so here we go, chapter four. I'm trying to set the scene for some Klaine-ishness in this one, but I'm also going to be getting some major plotlines in here as well. Enjoy!**

* * *

><p>"<em>NO!<em>" Blaine shouts, blasting back into reality. He sits up on his elbows, panting heavily almost as if he really _had_ been running. Nightmares are familiar to him; they've come plenty of times before. Just never as vivid, never as _real_…

He brings his hand up to wipe the sheen of sweat from his forehead and discovers the extremity is trembling on its own.

"Oh…my god…" Blaine breathes after a moment, letting his head loll back until he is staring at the ceiling.

There is a gentle tapping at the door and Blaine jerks his gaze towards the sound just in time to see Kurt peer out from behind the panel of wood, his face groggy but concerned.

"Hey, you okay?" Kurt whispers, glancing behind him to make sure nobody is coming.

Blaine nods, still too flustered to answer out loud in a way that would be half convincing. Kurt eyes him skeptically for a moment and takes one last look back before stepping inside the closet and shutting the door behind him.

Even with Blaine's newly established trust, the idea of being locked in a room as small as this with someone like Kurt still makes him twitch with apprehension. There is barely enough light to see as Kurt's silhouetted form picks its way carefully over to the foot of the inflatable mattress, dropping down to the floor and sitting cross legged on the wood.

"Nightmare?" Kurt asks simply. Blaine hesitates for a moment before nodding, looking away in embarrassment from the Kurt's reflective, cat-like eyes.

Kurt seems to debate internally about his next question, but in the end he decides to ask anyway. "What was it about? You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

"It…" Blaine starts, but his words are cut short by a bout of vulnerability. He was about to say, 'It was nothing,' but something stopped him. Something inside him snapped. The dam holding back the sea of emotions suddenly cracked and started leaking, and now all he wants is to pour out every detail, every feeling, every pain to the boy across from him.

Even before the plague, Blaine never had the chance to really _talk_ about his troubles. On the surface, his parents always appeared so…impenetrable. He learned to model himself after them; he learned to bottle it in, to be solid, to be stoic. But now, everything around him has toppled and he's so unsure; he doesn't know how to act, how to feel. He swallows hard against a growing lump in his throat.

"My sister…" Blaine whispers.

And those two words are all it takes to burst through the dam altogether. The tears start flowing without his permission, gliding down his cheeks and imbedding themselves into the part of his lips until he can taste the salt. He takes a shuddering breath and turns away from Kurt, burying his head in his hands and propping his elbows in his lap.

"S-sorry," he chokes through his palms. Kurt freezes for a moment before tentatively reaching out and patting his shoulder. Blaine flinches at the touch but allows it, desperately trying to draw comfort from _somewhere_, and at the moment, Kurt seems to be a source.

"Don't apologize," Kurt says softly, rubbing circles into Blaine's muscle and loosening the many knots.

"Your p-parents…?" Blaine asks as he tries to control his breathing. Kurt seems to understand and replies comfortingly.

"They didn't hear you before; it's fine."

"Okay…"

A few minutes pass before Blaine is ready to speak again. He fights against each wracking sob before finally letting go and allowing them to overwhelm him, unconsciously leaning closer and closer to Kurt with each harsh inhale.

After he quiets a little and all that's left are silent tears, Kurt lets his hand drop from Blaine's shoulders and rest at his side.

"What is your sister like?" Kurt says after a bit of time.

Blaine wipes his face with the back of his hand. "She's…she's the best," he replies, his voice broken and damaged. "My mom always said that she looked just like me…and it's true. We have the same hair…she hates it…she always says she has the 'curse of curls'." Blaine lets out a heartbroken laugh, sniffling as he half-smiles.

Kurt returns the smile

"Having a little sister...it isn't always a dream come true, what with all the dress-up dolls and the hairbrushes…but, she's my _sister_…I love her…and now…n-now it's just..." Blaine trails off, stuttering as the tears return full force. He has to take a few moments to regain his composure before continuing.

"I lost her," he says, his voice just barely audible. "I stood there and I _watched_ them take her away from me. I…I failed as an older brother. I couldn't protect her…it's just, t-they were _everywhere_ and…I couldn't get to her in time…they just…_swarmed_…"

Kurt doesn't answer for quite some time. As soon as his crying is mostly under control again, Blaine looks up to see Kurt's brow furrowed with thought, the boys' lips pursed ever so slightly in a way that stabs Blaine with the same odd sensation that appears and disappears like a puff of smoke.

"You came here to find her, didn't you?" Kurt asks finally.

"…yes. I did."

"Hmm." Kurt thinks about this. He stares at Blaine with an unfathomable expression, the silence stretching on for what seems like more than a minute before he breaks from his frozen posture, opening his arms in invitation. Blaine simply gapes at the boy, neither refusing nor accepting the offer. After a while, Kurt moves towards him on his own, wrapping Blaine in a comforting hug.

At first, the gesture sends Blaine's instincts reeling. The only thing that keeps him from wrenching his body away is the temporary shock-induced paralysis in his limbs. But in the time it takes for him to regain control of his muscles, he realizes…it feels _good. _

His head is buried in the crook of Kurt's shoulder, his nose skimming over the soft, downy hair at the nape of his neck. It smells nice. _Kurt _smells nice.

And then, in the blink of an eye, the entire situation becomes so, _so_ much more confusing.

The flash comes back again. The proverbial light bursts into the small room and drowns everything in color and vitality, and suddenly, Blaine is blinded by its luminosity. He feels something that he hasn't felt in ages. He feels…_happy._ He feels like everything in the world has a place and a purpose and there is balance and equilibrium and harmony. Warmth pulses through him to the tips of his fingers.

And as Kurt holds him in the darkness, he waits for the sensation to fade again.

It doesn't.

"You might be the bravest person I've ever met," Kurt whispers in his ear. Blaine shivers—_he actually shivers_—as Kurt's breath tickles the side of his face. Before he knows it, his arms are moving by themselves and wrapping around Kurt's torso, returning the hug with equal enthusiasm that he didn't know he possessed. His conscience stays astonishingly quiet.

_Aren't I supposed to be berating myself right now?_ Blaine wonders. _Why is this suddenly okay?_

It seems too soon when Kurt pulls away. He holds Blaine at shoulder length, staring at him meaningfully.

"I'm going to help you," Kurt declares. "I'm going to help you find her."

"W-what?" Blaine blanches. His jaw drops unceremoniously open.

"I don't really know you that well," Kurt begins, "But I know that you're a good person. You've gone through so many struggles…I just want to do what I can to make your journey a little less painful. And if helping you is the way to do it, I will."

Blaine still hasn't closed his mouth. At this point, he feels he's being a bit rude, but he can't get his brain to wrap around what Kurt just said.

"But….but…"

"I don't know why either," Kurt answers for him. "Just…a part of me feels that I should. I can't describe it…maybe it has to do with that prophetic, destiny-related nonsense you read about in those magazines nobody subscribes to." He shrugs offhandedly but underneath his easy-going façade Kurt's own thoughts are swirling as well. "Whatever it is, all I can tell you is that for some odd reason, I feel _very_ strongly about this. I have to help you_._ Please, let me?"

At the moment, the only portion of his body that Blaine can control is his head. He nods numbly at Kurt, his eyes stinging slightly from his physical inability to blink. He still hasn't closed his mouth yet. He probably should.

Kurt sighs in relief, dropping his hands from Blaine's shoulders and flashing a warm smile.

"Good. So I'm assuming that she might be somewhere in the city because…well because you made the trek down here…" Kurt smirks. "It's a little late at night to start planning right now—I mean, my god it's like three p.m.—so how about we get a little more rest and then start fresh tomorrow? Sound alright?"

"Y…yeah…" Blaine replies weakly.

"Perfect," Kurt chirps. He stands up from his place on the mattress and daintily picks his way over to the door. Despite the whirlpool of thoughts ricocheting around the walls of his skull, Blaine still manages to be struck by the gracefulness of Kurt's stride, the litheness of his form.

_Just one more confusing emotion to be added to the pile_, he supposes.

Just before Kurt shuts the door behind him, he turns back to the darkness. "Goodnight, Blaine," he murmurs softly in a voice that sounds like the smooth flutter of silk through the summer air. A voice that's weightless but electrifying all at once, intoxicating but not overpowering, soothing and warm but not placating or doting. A voice that's full of compassion and caring and comfort.

The door shuts with a faint click from the latch.

Blaine feels butterflies.

* * *

><p>"Ugh."<p>

That's the only sound Kurt can make when he wakes up the next morning—or night…or, whatever. He rubs his eyes with his fists like a child, yawning widely and stretching his arms over his head.

He had such a weird dream last night. Something about a boy…a human, rather. Strange; it was so realistic. He can even remember the color of the supposed boy's eyes, gradients of hazel and forest green. There was a part where the boy even came into his _home_.

Kurt stretches out the few remaining muscles in his back as he sits up in bed, making a satisfied sound as a few joints click in his spine. He uses the short moment to go back through the details of the dream, marveling at how clearly he can recall each event, as if it had really happened. _How could something so ridiculous as that ever occur in real life?_, he scoffs internally.

_Thud!_

Nope, that was real.

Kurt's head snaps over in the direction of the closet door where the sound originated. He takes a split second to let his mind grasp the fact that everything from yesterday indeed actually took place.

Then he begins to worry.

His first assumption to the origin of the sound is that Blaine woke up, panicked, and tripped over on Kurt's massive collection of shoes lining the edges of the closet and is now lying unconscious on the floor, his life slowing ebbing away with each passing second.

_Okay maybe that's a _little_ dramatic…_

Kurt throws off his comforter and springs out of bed, practically running over to the closet and grasping the door handle with a tad bit too much force. He yanks the door open and squints into the darkness of the small room, searching the floor immediately for an unmoving, lifeless form.

Instead, when his eyes finally tear away from the wood and climb upwards, he finds the _moving_ form of Blaine, slightly hunched over with his right hand clasped roughly against his forehead. The boy is facing away from him, looking more than a bit unsteady as he braces himself against the wall with his free arm.

"Nng…ow…" Blaine groans quietly. Kurt stands in the doorway, stilled for the moment by a bout of shock. Blaine is hurt? What happened? Is he okay?

"Blaine?" Kurt says softly. He sees the boy's body jolt in response and feels guilty for not alerting him to his presence sooner. Blaine turns on his heel to face Kurt, his eyes wide with terror that sends Kurt's mind spinning with concern. Blaine doesn't remove his hand from his forehead; on the contrary, it seems to press harder inwards, as if he wished it to permanently mold to his skin.

"Blaine? Are you alright? Did you hurt yourself?"

Blaine shakes his head, but not in the way that would answer Kurt's question. The motion is almost a warning, as if he were trying to say 'don't come any closer'. Kurt takes half a step forward, his mind buzzing with worry, and then it hits him.

The smell.

Oh. _Oh_…_oh…_

_That_ smell. That rich, intoxicating, metallic, _warm_ smell…

Before he completely loses himself, the tiny remainder of consciousness manages to give one last kick against the overpowering lust, shutting off Kurt's airways and closing his throat. He stands there in total, utter shock, unable to move even an inch, even a _millimeter _from his position. His mouth gapes openly, though no air takes passage in or out of it. He can't think. He can't _function_.

If he _were_ able to process civilized thought in that moment, he would probably be wondering why the affect of it was so _strong_. He can't ever remember blood being this…this _tantalizing. _This _hypnotizing_. Not even the pure stuff, like what Carol brought home. Sure, it's enough to make him forget about his qualms with family members, enough to get him drooling like a basset hound…but he can always _control _himself. He can always put forth that small amount of effort that makes the difference between eating with a spoon and slurping it down face first.

But _this…_there is no other comparison.

A short, wheezing sound emanates from where his mouth should be. He can't know for sure where because, well, he doesn't feel anything at the moment. His body has become this bulky, lifeless thing attached to his brain. He makes the sound at the exact moment his mind conjures up an image of him being punched, hard, in the face. _Why_ he thinks of that, he will never truly know. But his best guess is that the amount of shock he is experiencing is somehow equivalent to a sharp crack to the jaw, and his body decides to react accordingly as if that figurative blow was _real. _

But now he's out of breath.

That's a problem.

Kurt finally manages to regain control over his limbs and his eyes dart around his room. He needs to inhale; the fuzzy, tingling lightheadedness has already begun to cloud behind his eyes from lack of oxygen. If he doesn't breathe now, his body will automatically.

And he'll be standing _right_ across from Blaine.

So really, the logic is simple. Get as far away from Blaine as possible.

Kurt springs into action, spinning around on the balls of his feet and making a b-line straight for his bed. He pushes off the floor with both legs and sails through the air almost gracefully before crashing down nose first into his giant mass of pillows. As soon as contact is made with the satin fabric, Kurt's gasping in full breaths of air like a suffocating fish, filling himself with nothing but the smell of himself and his fairly expensive hair products.

He counts his breaths. One…two…three…four…

"B-Blaine…" he stutters into his pillow. "What happened in there?"

A response doesn't come immediately. He figures that Blaine is still trying to recover from the crippling realization that Kurt could have killed him moments ago. Kurt swallows hard at the thought, squeezing his eyes shut in remorse. Yes, it had been that close.

A long time passes. A very long time. But Kurt is patient. He doesn't dare look up to see Blaine's inevitably trembling body; he's too afraid of what he might see trailing down the boy's forehead…

_Stop thinking about it…_

"H-hit m-my head…" Blaine chokes out. The tremor is more than audible in his voice.

Kurt feels a flash of guilt at how frightened Blaine sounds. In that brief stretch of time before he replies, he feels more like a monster than ever before.

"Are you okay?" Kurt asks. He very much wants to pull his head out of the pillow and see Blaine's face for himself, but isn't sure he can handle it quite yet.

"Y-yeah…" Blaine heaves a strangled breath. "A-are you?"

_By that he means, 'are you going to kill me?'_ Kurt thinks. He sighs to himself and nods. "Yes, I think…do you mind—um—cleaning it up, though? It'll probably be easier if I can't see it."

Kurt shoves the image of trailing blood out of his mind and focuses on Blaine's audible heartbeat, listening intently as it grows infinitesimally slower.

"C-clean it up with what? There's nothing to use. I-I mean, I know there's Kleenex in the bathroom but it's out in the hallway and I don't want to disturb—"

"Use one of my socks," Kurt interrupts. "My bureau, top left drawer. They're organized first by color, then by brand, then by age…" Kurt smirks sheepishly into the pillow, idly wondering what Blaine thinks of his compulsivity. "If you don't mind, can you pick out one of the cheaper ones?"

He waits for a moment before hearing the sliding of wood and the faint shuffling of fabric. He detects Blaine's quiet but sharp intake of breath from what could only be the result of pressing the sock to his forehead. Kurt himself winces, though he doesn't know why.

"Okay…" Blaine pipes up after a minute. "I think I got everything"

Kurt takes one last long breath from his pillow—he's planning on holding it for a while—before rising up from the bed and turning to Blaine. The boy looks a little frazzled but most importantly his face is absent of any blood. It's all soaked into the fibers of the sock which, luckily, is black and masks any of the red stains that would easily show on white cotton. Blaine still has it pressed to his skin, but he seems a bit less terrified, maybe only apprehensive.

"Do you…do you maybe have a Band Aid or some gauze or…?" Blaine asks quietly, trailing off and blushing. Kurt averts his eyes quickly but he still silently wonders why Blaine would be so embarrassed to ask for help. Nevertheless, he turns to exit the bedroom, stopping once by his bed to grab his pillow and smush it against his face for another breath. The act itself must look pretty stupid, but Kurt doesn't care. If it means the difference between Blaine being alive or dead, he's willing to look like a complete clown.

Kurt comes back from the bathroom shortly after with a box of jumbo Band-Aids and hands it to Blaine, stopping by his bed to grab another breath from his pillow.

A few moments pass before Blaine hands the box back, a fresh bandage covering the wound on his forehead.

"Thanks," he says quietly. Kurt nods in return, still wary of breathing just in case the smell might be lingering in the air. Blaine glances around the room awkwardly before coming back to stare directly at Kurt. "And…and thanks for not, um…y-you know…killing me…"

"No…er, no problem," Kurt manages before cutting off his air again. He needed to answer that out loud; a nod would not have sufficed. After the small, tense interchange, Blaine falls silent again and looks down at his feet, wandering over to the closet door and reaching out to touch the handle lightly.

"…is it always that bad?" Blaine breathes, his eyes staying fixed downwards.

Kurt blinks slowly and swallows hard.

"No, it's not."

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I know, it's been so long since I last updated. And I'm SO SORRY. Seriously guys, I feel pretty guilty. But, in my defense, it's been a REALLY long past few weeks. For starters, I tore my ACL and I've been in and out of doctors offices like you would not believe :( Second, school started up and keeping up with work is a PAIN. I've been swamped with life you guys.**

**Anyway, I can't promise that updates will be consistent. But I can promise that they will get done. Again, I'm really sorry you guys. **

**Please review! They really put a smile on my face :) **


	5. Chapter 5

The following two weeks consist of basically the same schedule: Kurt wakes up, steals some breakfast for Blaine and heads to school, leaving Blaine on his own to catch up on the news, wander the apartment, and—if he feels brave enough—even explore the rest of the building and surrounding street. But most of the time Blaine is not brave enough, so he settles with lounging on the couch and enjoying the luxury of having endless amounts of food at his fingertips as well as warm showers and plumbing.

When Kurt returns in the afternoon, they spend the remainder of the day simply talking. The two of them take to sharing interests, telling jokes, reminiscing about the past, expressing hopes for the future. Later, when the hour hand on the clock slowly creeps closer to six, Blaine retreats to the safe haven of Kurt's closet and takes a short nap on his blow up mattress while Kurt has dinner with his family. After a while, he's woken up to the soft jostling of his shoulder and the sight of Kurt's warm, kind smile, the smell of fresh food wafting through the air to his nose as Kurt hands him a plate full of leftovers of whatever the family had just dined upon—absent of the blood, of course.

And for a while, everything is alright.

While Blaine settles into this pattern of life, this life relatively free of stress and hunger and pain, he finds his mind beginning to wander to freer, brighter pastures. He starts to focus on things his former self would find inconsequential and even ridiculous. He thinks about Kurt. Quite a bit, actually.

When Kurt brings him breakfast, he spends the short amount of time during the exchange re-memorizing the curves of the boy's jaw line, the silky smooth planes of his cheeks and the glisten in his eyes. When Kurt leaves, Blaine finds his attention being drawn back to the boy's face again, trying to reconstruct the image as best he can on the invisible canvas in his brain.

Blaine no longer flinches when Kurt touches him. In fact, he welcomes the contact. Kurt's hugged him exactly four times since he came to the apartment, each time proving no different than the first with explosions of brightness and warmth and happiness that Blaine is beginning to crave like a drug. He finds himself looking for opportunities to touch Kurt, to brush a hand on his skin or bump shoulders or secure a stray lock of hair. Anything to get his fix. And every time he finds himself grinning stupidly afterwards, sometimes having to fabricate an answer if Kurt asks him about the sudden change in temperament.

But one afternoon, something happens that makes every confusing emotion in his body so much clearer.

Kurt and Blaine are both in the kitchen, experimenting with a recipe from one of Carol's cookbooks that was brought from Kurt's old home in Ohio when Blaine accidentally knocks the salt shaker off the counter. It hits the floor with a loud clang and rolls under the bottom ridge of the cabinet drawers, leaving a small trail of crystals in its wake.

"Oh, sorry," Blaine exclaims at the same time Kurt says, "Don't worry about it."

Kurt smirks at Blaine's faint blush and bends down to retrieve the shaker, ignoring the boy's meek protest.

"Wait, I'll get it—" Blaine begins, unconsciously leaning over Kurt's crouched form and reaching a hand out to nothing in particular, but by this time Kurt's already got the shaker in his grip and is straightening back up again.

"Really, it's fine, it was an accide—_mmf!_"

And then their faces crash together.

There is a faint smacking sound, but not of the kind one would attribute to two heads colliding in a moment of clumsiness, though in reality that's precisely what happened. It is soft, and somewhat gentle, a sound reminiscent of something tender and intimate and natural.

A kiss.

And then Kurt leans back quickly, laughing nervously, his face scrunched up in pain as he rubs the bridge of his nose. Blaine stands frozen in his spot, temporarily immobilized by what just accidentally transpired. His right cheekbone aches dully but he hasn't the presence of mind to focus on it because Kurt's lips had been pressed against his, Kurt's breath had ricocheted warmly off his own, Kurt's eyelashes had fluttered on his temple with a bizarre feeling of closeness he's never experienced before. A bolt of lightning may well have struck him on the crown of his head. He feels utterly weightless.

And somewhere in the depths of his euphoria, Blaine knows that it had been an act of chance rather than a conscious decision. The angle at which their skulls collided forced their lips to join for the small fraction of a second, a mere blip in time.

But it had been enough to completely alter his vision of the world.

Blaine doesn't notice Kurt's worried voice until the boy's hands lightly form to sides of his face.

"Blaine? Hello? Blaine, are you okay?"

"What…?"

Every sound comes back into focus as though he'd just emerged from a pool of water.

"Are you alright? Sorry about that, I must've clonked you pretty hard."

"What…oh…" Blaine replies dumbly, his fingers brushing over the small welt already forming on his cheek. He can't remember ever lifting his arm up to do so. "Yeah…sorry about that…I shouldn't have been stooping over you."

"It wasn't your fault; I stood up too fast," Kurt dismisses and leans back, giving one last massage to his nose for good measure before turning on his heel and stalking over to the freezer.

"I'll get you some ice for that. It's already swelling."

Blaine follows him across the kitchen like a lost puppy.

Soon he's sitting opposite Kurt at the kitchen table, a cold pack pressed delicately against the now bluish mark on his face. Kurt is continuing a conversation that has been going for at least ten minutes, none of which Blaine is fully processing, though he gives a valiant effort in trying.

It'd only been a moment.

A split second.

Had Kurt even noticed?

Blaine finds his swirling thoughts continuously circling back to this specific rut. Though it had been so significant to him, though his life seems to now be revolving around this one tiny event, he can't simply assume that Kurt feels the same way. He can't say Kurt even realized it'd happened. It had been so short…

A part of Blaine clings to the hope that Kurt had not even registered the contact because then it would mean things would not change between them, and Blaine's life would be a whole lot simpler. Because thanks to the kiss, every scrambled emotion and thought is now perfectly organized under one main, inner declaration.

He wants Kurt. He wants Kurt more than anything he's ever wanted in his life.

Not just physically—though he's come to that realization already—but on a much deeper level. He wants to _know _Kurt. He wants to know what makes Kurt smile, what causes the happiness to bubble to his lips and wrinkle the skin around his eyes, what causes that same brightness to wilt like a dying flower so he can protect against it.

He wants it so badly, his chest aches.

But he can't voice his desires until he knows the feeling is reciprocated. The small fragment of his own happiness is hanging by a thread, fragile and weak and so susceptible to hurt it's almost a wonder nothing has destroyed it yet. He can't risk anything yet for his own mental wellbeing.

Which is why, as Blaine's conscience orbits around his body in a completely different universe than that of Kurt's conversation, he silently wishes that normal life will not stop for this, that it will move ahead and come back to this place when he is ready and whole enough to take it on.

"So then _I _said to her…" Kurt's voice swims back into his mind just as the boy trails off and finally notices Blaine's detached expression. "Hey, Blaine, is everything okay? You look a little spacey."

_Everything's just peachy,_ Blaine's foggy mind retorts,_ except for the fact that whenever you grin, I grin and whenever you cry, I cry, and whenever you make the face you're making now, I just want to pull you into my arms and kiss you and whisper sweet nothings in your ear and laugh because it's childish and stupid but romantic all the same, but I can't because I know that if you reject me, if you turn away with a sweet, pitying smile like so many do, I might just take the nearest bridge…_

"'M fine," Blaine replies simply.

Kurt doesn't immediately respond. Instead, he rests his chin in his hands and stares at Blaine with a furrowed brow.

"…Okay," he finally murmurs. A long moment passes before Kurt breaks eye contact and rises from his seat at the table, returning to the bowl of mixed ingredients the two had left on the kitchen island.

Blaine sighs heavily.

* * *

><p>"Hey…<em>hey<em>…wake up… Blaine, wake up."

The soft hiss of Kurt's whisper barely penetrates through the dense fog of sleep that hangs like a curtain over his vision.

"Nng…w…what?" Blaine groans, opening his eyes only to find them blinded by the light of Kurt's phone. "Can you turn that off?" he asks, crabby from lack of sleep. The way Kurt is holding the phone in the dark brings back less than pleasant memories of his days in the alley, and Blaine deems it too early in the morning—or night, or whatever—to deal with images like those.

"Oh, sorry," Kurt replies quietly, flicking the flash of his camera to the off position and casting the closet into darkness black as pitch. "It's just that I've dug up some information about your sister and I think you might want to know about it as soon as possible."

Blaine sits up immediately on his mattress and squints in Kurt's direction. "You have?"

"Yes. I pulled up a website on my laptop that has records of captured humans and blood farm specimen transfers. I'm not one-hundred percent sure it's what we're looking for, but it's definitely a start."

Blaine takes a second to process the information before standing up in the mattress, hearing Kurt follow suit after him.

"Show me."

Kurt leads Blaine out of the closet and into his room, his laptop open and glowing on his bed. Blaine glances around the room at the deep shadows lit up by the glow of the computer screen, catching the gleam of the light off the steel shutters securely bolted to the window frames, obscuring any light seeping in from outside. He figures it may be the adrenaline in his bloodstream, but for some reason the darkness of the room seems more menacing than before and he sticks closer to Kurt's side.

They scoot to the center of Kurt's bed and rest the laptop between them. The website that is open looks to be that of an overzealous blogger, intent on revealing so-called government conspiracies in a poorly executed attempt at anarchy. Blaine glances uneasily at Kurt upon reading the title of one of the latest article, "Everything You Know is a Lie".

"I know…" Kurt says with a grimace. "It may not be the _most_ reliable source. But keep scrolling down and you might change your mind."

The long article drones on continuously, paragraph after paragraph of mostly blind accusations accentuated with underlines and many exclamation points, until finally the columns of text are interrupted by two scanned photos of charts, each box filled in with compulsively neat, handwritten script.

The title of the first set of charts reads "Interdepartmental Transfers: Classified".

"What're these for?" Blaine wonders aloud, his eyes flickering down the rows and rows of data. There is so much information packed into such a small space, each column labeled with title such as 'last name' 'age', 'hair', 'eye color', and 'unique physical characteristics'.

"I read his article too," Kurt says. "It's clear that this guy's a little crazy, but some of the things he was writing about seemed pretty feasible. Like right here, for instance."

Kurt reaches over and replaces Blaine's hand on the touch pad with his own. A tingle races down Blaine's arm at the soft contact and he finds himself forcefully refocusing on the task at hand, a bit guilty for being so easily distracted, especially when trying to figure out how to save his sister.

Kurt scrolls up to a previous paragraph and highlights a section of text that looks similar, if not identical to the over-enthusiastic drawl of the rest of the article. But Blaine reads it nonetheless.

"_So, now that we're in a blood recession of sorts, I've gotten to wondering about our beloved government's methods of conservation. After countless hours of research, I came across a couple artifacts that fell into the wrong hands and are now available to anyone—anyone who knows where to find it, that is. These records wouldn't have been so important to me if they hadn't have had the one KEY word. CLASSIFIED. Yes, that's right my dear friends. The government doesn't want any of the 'common folk' in on this little bad boy. BIG SURPRISE!_

_Anyway, for those of you readers who are actually competent and are familiar with the intricate workings of the Familial Ties Act of 2013, I'd like to point out that my concern with these documents pertains solely with sections 2 and 3. _

Blaine pauses on this line and turns to Kurt confusedly.

"What's the Familial Ties Act?" he asks.

"It's…really complicated," Kurt replies, furrowing his brow as he considers the best way to explain it. "I can't say that I know every section of the Act—that doesn't mean I'm and imbecile, mind you; mister high-and-mighty-blogger here is just being a bit presumptuous—but I can tell you that, in summary, the Act protects families whose members are not yet all turned. For example, let's say that I have an uncle that's still human but has every intention to turn and assimilate into society, but is just not ready yet. The Act prevents the government from taking my uncle by force and farming him as if he were a rogue."

"Well if they're so eager to be one of you, what's the hold up?" Blaine asks a bit sourly. "Why wait?"

"It's not usually older people who take advantage of the Act; maybe my example was a bit off. Usually families use it to protect their children." Kurt notices Blaine's stare become even more puzzled than before.

"Children? Why them specifically?"

"Because turning is a very, _very_ big deal. Essentially, you're picking the age you're going to stay for the rest of forever. I'm never growing any older, Blaine. I've turned seventeen ten times already since the beginning of all this and I'll turn seventeen over and over again until either the world ends or I end myself. I had no qualms about turning when my father introduced the idea to me because I was at an age that allowed me all the freedoms in the world. But now think of it with a six year old child. Would you want to stay six for the rest of time? For starters, you could be as wise and mature as a full grown adult, but even with your knowledge nobody would take you seriously because of your physical appearance. You'd never experience the joy of growing up. Your parents would be your sole providers forever and you'd basically be a burden to them." Kurt speaks matter-of-factly, though his face betrays pity and sadness. "There are just so many negatives of turning as a child. But back before 2013, people were forced into it or else they had their own children taken away from them, stolen right out of their arms. Now, because of this Act, they have the option of allowing them time to grow up enough before they turn. Most children choose to turn around my age or a little older, but some choose to wait longer. I heard of one who waited until he turned thirty before stopping the clock."

Blaine takes a minute to absorb all of it, turning around the idea in his head cogitatively and trying not to allow bias to taint his slowly forming opinion. In retrospect, the idea is not all that bad, as it allows the individual more freedom to choose their own fate.

_Not enough freedom_, Blaine's conscience interjects, and he frowns at the laptop screen, at the names listed column by column like inventory in a meat packaging plant.

"So what are these charts for?" he asks.

"Keep reading, you'll see."

Blaine's eyes flicker back up to the highlighted paragraph and he picks up where he left off.

_If I recall, sections 2 and 3 both discuss the government's promise to protect your family over long distances within the continental United States. It seems like a comforting notion, doesn't it? Well, guess what people? It's all a LIE. _

_How many of you have lost touch with some of your human relatives since the Subsider Riots of 2017? I'm guessing quite a few. _

Blaine doesn't bother to ask; Kurt simply fills in the blanks for him.

"There was a huge uprising of subsiders after the first blood rationing laws were passed. It allowed local governments the ability to control how much blood you buy from markets and farms in an attempt to distribute nutrition more evenly among the population. But, even with these laws, shelves were cleared out minutes after businesses opened their doors. People were borderline ravenous, and those who weren't aggressive enough went hungry and eventually morphed into subsiders. After almost a year of this pattern, the streets were almost too dangerous to walk alone, there were so many of them. One day, they just swarmed the streets and killed off everyone in sight. There were a lot of families after that who couldn't find their human relatives. They all assumed they'd been killed in the riots, I guess. That was when the police force started cracking down on subsider detainment."

Blaine nodded and continued the article.

_It wasn't the subsiders who took away your family. Your sons and daughters weren't struck down by hideous, conscienceless creatures. No, the ones who robbed you of your happiness were of perfectly stable mind._

_To be blunt, everyone you thought you lost is most likely dying slowly right now by the hand of an IV tube. The blood farming executives have always proved to be greedy tyrants, haven't they?_

_The government was tricky, you see. They foresaw the blood crisis and the fact that they had no plan for how to combat it. The only reason they passed The Family Ties Act was to protect against mutiny, but they all knew that it took away potential stock in the blood market. The Subsider Riots, for them at least, was a bout of luck. They used it as a cover up for when they captured and began farming every last human in the city illegally. The subsiders were just scapegoats. _

_Moral of the story? DON"T TRUST THE SYSTEM!_

Blaine read the last section of highlighted text, veering away when it began to stray farther from an informative tone and closer to that of a rant.

"So, he thinks the government is illegally farming citizens protected under the Familial Ties Act? But what does that have to do with my sister?" he asks Kurt with a lost expression.

Kurt rubs his forearm self-consciously as he begins to doubt himself. Maybe his original thinking was a bit farfetched.

"Well, I thought there might be a chance that one of these was your sister…" he says, gesturing to the charts.

"But my sister is a…what did you call it? A rouge?"

Kurt nods and Blaine continues with his reasoning.

"So if she's a rogue, she wouldn't be protected under the Act, would she?"

Kurt holds up his hand as a signal to quiet. "Technically, no. But your sister is not a rogue, and neither are you."

Blaine blanches.

"Wait…_what?_"

"Your mother and father may have refused to turn, but that doesn't mean everybody in your family opted for the same fate. When's the last time you talked to your uncle Xavier?"

Blaine sits in stunned silence, his mind flashing back to the dim memories had with his father's brother. They are mostly unpleasant, filled with the image of the disheveled, drunkard of a man which, since Blaine's childhood, he had little contact with other than an occasional phone call, speaker emanating the man's slurred, expletive ridden voice. Blaine never thought much of his uncle, and his parents both discouraged interaction with him, saying he was a bad influence and could corrupt Blaine in his primary years.

Xavier hasn't crossed Blaine's mind in years.

"How do you know about him?" Blaine asks curiously, though he sports the same puzzled inflection as before.

Kurt smirks in the light of the laptop screen. "It's really not that hard. Ancestry-dot-com. But thanks to the new widespread censoring of the internet, the makers of the website included a little icon next to the names of the people who to this day remain human. I noticed that your uncle's name was absent of one, so it could've meant only one thing."

"My uncle is like you."

"Precisely. Which brings us back to your sister. If these charts only pertain to specimens that were already protected under the Familial Ties Act as the author of the blog insinuates, then one of these could be your sister. There's a link at the bottom of the page leading to more charts just like these, and so far, I've found about a hundred 'Anderson's and fifty that are underage and girls. And since these charts are only about a week old," Kurt pauses and takes a breath.

"Blaine, there's a chance your sister may still be living."


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: ***PLEASE READ THE A/N!*** THERE ARE IMPORTANT EXPLANATIONS BELOW.**

**So hopefully the last chapter wasn't too confusing. Basically what last chapter came down to was that Blaine and his sister are protected under the Familial Ties Act because they have a close relative that is a vampire. **

**Some of you may be doubtful that his sister is still living—it has been months, after all, since she's been captured, meaning it's been months that she's been in the farms—but in my story, the government takes children into special consideration because they have more years left to live and are mostly more resilient than adults. Also, since the world is in the middle of a blood shortage they try to conserve humans as much as possible. What the farms do is they draw from the children until the very last possible second and then take them off the IV's so they can recover back to full health before repeating the process over again. Essentially, the children will be farmed for the rest of their lives. Pretty horrible way to die, isn't it?**

**But have no fear, Kurt and Blaine are coming to the rescue! That is, if they don't keep getting distracted with each other first. This chapter is basically both Kurt and Blaine's perspective on one event. **

**WARNING: This chapter leans more towards the rating M than T.**** M starts after the first break in case you want to skip. **

* * *

><p>Kurt meticulously molds his bangs into a coif, coating each section of hair with an appropriate amount of gel before sculpting them to their normal, daily perfection. His fingers move mechanically as he works, each movement copied down in muscle memory and executed with professional grace as he tilts his head forward into the lamp light. But today, he pays significantly less attention to the art form than usual.<p>

He can't help but keep jumping back to that same memory that's been plaguing his mind since it happened.

They'd knocked heads. That is, sincerely, all.

But even with this sentiment, he can't stop the tingling sensation from returning to the soft skin of his lips, can't prevent the rush of heat spreading through his body as if the blood sloshing in his stomach is being set at a low boil.

It'd felt so…_good_.

Kurt has to stop his ritual in order to slow his sudden rapid breathing.

From the moment the mask of grime had been lifted, Kurt had admitted to himself that Blaine was attractive. He'd then put the feeling aside, passing it off as some sort of short but powerful infatuation with the boy's aura of mystery. Now, though, he isn't so sure.

Since the incident in the kitchen, Kurt feels as though a switch has been flicked on in his brain, as though his body is a radio tower now picking up a different frequency. No matter how hard he tries to distract himself from his thoughts—all of which seem to be focused on Blaine—he can't stray for very long before falling back.

And as he tries to focus on readying himself for the coming day, he finds it especially difficult to block out the small, but barely audible sounds of Blaine's mumblings emanating from behind the closet door.

_Wait…mumbling? _

It takes Kurt a moment before he realizes that, no, Blaine has never before talked in his sleep.

He abandons the work on his hair in an instant, darting up from the chair and over to the door. Pressing an ear to the wood, he hears the sounds at a higher volume; sighs and incoherent murmurs break the occasional space of silence, accompanied by small whispers and the shuffling noises of Blaine shifting on his mattress. Kurt smirks to himself and debates whether or not to open the door and wake him. After the rational side of him gives its two cents, Kurt decides that it would be in both of their best interests to quiet the boy and not risk his parents overhearing. He opens the door quietly and creeps in, momentarily curious at the new clarity of Blaine's speech, some of which he recognizes as actual words.

Most of what Blaine says is generic and a little boring for the endless possibilities of unconscious chatter. Kurt listens as Blaine whispers things like "no", and "you", and "yes".

A bit disappointed, Kurt reaches down to give Blaine's shoulder a firm shake when he hears something that he _never_ expected to pass from Blaine's lips.

"_Oh Kuurt…_"

For a moment, Kurt thinks he imagined it, only to be proven wrong when Blaine punctuates his previous exclamation with a low moan.

Kurt freezes. He blinks.

_Is he…is he having…one of _those_ dreams?_

His mind throws up an involuntary wall, blocking the thought mid-process. No, he can't even…he can't think about that right now.

Kurt lets the embarrassed shock pass through his system before even attempting to regain muscle control. It takes a surprisingly long time.

Finally, when he is able to move his arms and legs he bends down shakily and jostles Blaine's shoulder a bit more violently than he originally intended.

"Blaine! _Blaine!_" he hisses frantically. Blaine emits a small groan, not as a product of his dream but instead from being woken up in such an abrupt manner.

"Wha…What's wrong? W-wha time izit?" Blaine slurs, still too drowsy to properly function.

"You were…erm…snoring." Kurt says with a noticeable grimace. Blaine's brows scrunch together in groggy confusion, missing Kurt's expression that reads 'lying' like a flashing neon sign.

"W…What? But, I never snore…"

Kurt feels his insides begin to sink. He hadn't counted on Blaine protesting.

"Well, you were this time. Must be…must be that the mattress is getting too low. I'll inflate it more tonight."

"Kurt, are you sure?"

"Y-Yep! Yep, totally sure!" Kurt replies, his voice skipping into a higher octave. This time, Blaine seems to catch on and he tilts his head with suspicion, staring at Kurt unwaveringly as if waiting for some kind of confession, his hazel-green eyes hypnotic and entrancing.

_Oh god, _Kurt thinks as he hold's Blaine's gaze. _His pupils are still blown out black… _

And that, for Kurt, seems to be the catalyst.

A strange feeling begins creeping towards Kurt's gut, not at all unpleasant and somewhat—if he would choose a word to describe it—_hungry_. A bout of astonishment throws Kurt's thoughts off kilter and his mouth drops open the tiniest amount, enough for him to almost taste the heady scent of Blaine wafting from every fabric on which the other boy is sitting. The boiling in his stomach returns, but with a force which entirely surpasses any he's felt in a very long time, rumbling until he begins to fear that it might actually be audible. Unlike moments before when had had to force his body to move, Kurt now faces the challenge of restraining the urge to reach over and just _feel, to _just run his hands over the dark haired boy simply for the desire to learn him. The yearning is both pleasant and terrifying, and Kurt can't make up his mind on which is the dominant emotion.

"Kurt, is something wrong?" Blaine finally asks.

Kurt shakes his head silently, not trusting himself to speak just yet. He needs time to process this…this _thing_ he's feeling. He needs time to let it sink in so he can make some sort of decision about it.

Blaine hesitates before continuing, waiting for Kurt's response that doesn't come. Finally he opens his mouth again, only to close it so his tongue can dart out and wet his lips. Kurt's mind fills with all sorts of images he didn't even know he could conjure, and his eyes widen with abashed embarrassment.

He can tell Blaine caught the change in his expression, and he fights to regain composure before he completely blows his cover.

"Okay…well, if you decide to tell me at any point, don't think twice. If something is bothering you, I'd like to know. I'm your friend, and all."

Kurt nods again, and then clears his throat.

"Ahem, well, erm…I'm going to go, uhm, eat breakfast and…and I guess I'll see you again when I get back from school. Bye."

He exits the closet quickly, leaving Blaine sitting in the dark.

* * *

><p>Blaine doesn't know what led up to this, can't recall what he was doing before it started happening, before he'd been pinned down on the comforter. He only registers the way his skin seems to be smothered in a painless fire. The way currents of electricity ripple through his body in sensuous waves. The way his throat stings in a way that <em>really <em>shouldn't feel so good as whimpers and groans tear out of his mouth in and endless stream. He wants to move, wants to relieve the pressure that appears the be making itself quite apparent farther down south, but something is on top of him, gripping his wrists and trapping them above his head like shackles. He isn't afraid; he doesn't have the sense to be. And he soon realizes that he doesn't _need_ to be when he hears a low, rough whisper brush past his earlobe.

"_God, Blaine, you should see yourself right now…so…ugh…"_

A sensation rips through him just after the words resonate in his mind and his eyes roll back in his skull, back arching off the soft surface beneath him as a scream of utter exaltation breaks past his lips.

After his mind clears enough to process snippets of thought again, he realizes that the heavenly feeling is coming from the same place the pressure had been. His blurry eyes whirl as he tries to figure out where he is and they catch on something lying next to him in a rumpled heap: a pair of blue jeans with his old cell phone still protruding from the pocket. It takes him a moment to fully realize what that would imply.

And then the whisper comes again, the higher pitch of the voice contrasting deliciously with the lusty tremor from before.

"_Nng…Blaine…_"

Blaine's mouth pops open audibly. It's Kurt. Kurt's doing this to him. And it feels so…

"_Ah! Oh, Kuuurt!"_ he whines as another explosion of pleasure rocks through him. He can't stand it…his brain feels about ready to have a meltdown from sensory overload.

Apparently his mouth had never closed, and Blaine feels Kurt's weight shift forward just before another pair of lips forcibly possess his own. Kurt's tongue dips down and swipes across the underside of his teeth, runs along the roof of his mouth. Blaine struggles to control his ragged breathing, even as his entire body lay covered in a sheen of sweat, the moisture evaporating where Kurt's cool palms meet his skin. Everything around him is moving from his trembling limbs to the gorgeous boy above him, and Blaine feels his awareness begin to crumble away, feels his mind begin to be swallowed up by it all.

Kurt twists his wrist expertly and Blaine lets loose a strangled keen.

_Oh god, I can't take it anymore, please, I can't handle this…too good…can't…think…I need to…I need…I'm going to… _

And then the entire universe surrounding him gets sucked into a black vacuum. The pleasure stops.

Kurt is gone. The bed is gone. So are his jeans and cell phone. He's surrounded by darkness, the only sound penetrating the void vague and distant at first, finally morphing into a sharp, cutting command.

"_Blaine. Blaine!_"

He groans. Why can't he just go back to the place he was before? What's so wrong with that?

But he recognizes the voice—it was the same one that'd been whispering to him, but now just in a different tone—and forces his protesting eyelids to open. Kurt is kneeling next to him, eyes flustered and wide. Light streams into the closet from the open door and assaults Blaine's eyes.

"What's wrong? What time is it?" he tries to ask, but his lips haven't woken up yet and he ends up sounding half drunk.

His mind jumps to a different tangent. Lips…the same lips that had just been connected to the one's he is staring at now. A rush of heat plummets from his stomach downwards and he swallows a feeling of nervousness; Kurt is _right there_ next to him, what if he notices?

By this point, Kurt's already beginning to answer, and Blaine has to tune in quickly to catch the tail end.

"…snoring," Kurt explains. Blaine frowns and scrunches his brow with fuzzy skepticism. He doesn't snore.

"What? But, I never snore."

Kurt pauses only for a moment before replying hastily, claiming that it must be because Blaine's mattress has deflated too much for comfort.

"Kurt, are you sure?" Blaine asks, his brain still muddled.

"Yep! Yep, totally sure!"

Blaine finally snaps back into full consciousness from this response. Kurt's eyes look far too wide and his voice nears the level of squeaking, not to mention that his face is beet red—for his complexion, at least— and his fists are subconsciously clenched. Blaine gives Kurt a suspicious look and waits for the truth to rear its head, waits for Kurt to break. In all honesty, Blaine is curious. He's not used to seeing Kurt this frazzled.

But after a few moments pass, he starts to notice a change.

For starters, Kurt's panicked gaze fades into a blank, unfocused stare before widening ever so slightly from what Blaine can only guess is the dawn of some sort of realization. The boy's lips part in shock and his face flushes deeper. A second or two passes where Kurt doesn't change, but finally something seems to click and the boy blinks once. Kurt's mind appears to return to the present and Blaine is floored by the difference he sees, the way Kurt is now looking at him like he's a giant, delicious piece of solid chocolate. Blaine's heart picks up its pace and begins to hammer in his chest. But not from fear, not even close.

"Kurt, is something wrong?" Blaine forces out, surprised at how level his voice is considering how wired he feels at the moment.

Kurt doesn't answer verbally and Blaine pauses for a minute in case the boy decides to attempt it. When it is apparent Kurt has no intention to, Blaine starts to continue, only to realize that his lips are cracked and dry. He quickly wets them with his tongue, not even thinking much of the action, and Kurt's face flushes even deeper. Blaine is filled with an incredibly powerful intrigue, but he decides not to ask, seeing as how Kurt looks a bit uncomfortable and he doesn't want to push things too far.

""Okay, well, if you decide to tell me at any point, don't think twice." Blaine reassures him, his eyes resting on Kurt's in what he hopes to be a trustworthy gaze. "If something is bothering you, I'd like to know. I'm your friend, and all."

Kurt nods, clearing his throat awkwardly before claiming he's going to eat breakfast and will see Blaine later. Before Blaine can reach out and catch his wrist, before he can force the truth out of the uncharacteristically jittery boy, Kurt darts out of the closet and slams the door.

By this time, it's obvious. Kurt had overheard him.

Blaine's spirit sinks horribly to his feet.

He sighs heavily and runs his fingers through his hair. A few seconds pass for him to reflect before he realizes that he had indeed been dreaming about Kurt that way, that his mind had fabricated every touch Kurt had given, every one of the boy's rough murmurs and breaths.

"Oh…" Blaine mumbles. "Oh no…"

He never noticed how connected he feels to Kurt mentally, how desperately he wants to feel that connection physically…

…and how downright _inappropriate _he's being to the person who saved his life.

"No no no…" Blaine gasps. He falls back onto the mattress with his head in his hands. It's all his fault. He's ruined everything.

Blaine grits his teeth with the oncoming of childish tears.

"What have I done?"


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: Some major plot coming up here. Like, MAJOR. **

* * *

><p>The next few days pass in something of an awkward haze. They barely talk about personal matters at all, instead only conversing over the blood farm charts that Kurt had dug up before. They'd managed to narrow down the choices of the many 'Anderson's' to three subjects using the physical descriptions given with their name. The three chosen may as well be identical twins according to the charts, all of them having dark brown hair, green to hazel eyes, and freckles. They are all said to be eleven years of age as well, much to Blaine dismay.<p>

"Why couldn't they have put more information on these things? These girls could be completely opposite in real life for all we know. I could be focusing on some random person right now and not my sister. Kurt, are you sure we found all the possible candidates? Maybe we skipped one."

And Blaine would go back and systematically check the lists for the third, fourth, fifth time in a row, scouring them for any more possibilities, any more hope of finding his family. Each time he would be presented with the same end result of the three twins-on-paper.

"I…I just wanted to be sure," Blaine would mumble after setting the charts back down again. He'd say it quietly, as if only to himself, as a justification of his insanity. "Just to be sure…just to be sure…"

Kurt would listen with concerned sadness.

On the morning Kurt sees Blaine checking the lists again for what has to be the tenth time, he decides to try and talk to him, to help to him ease whatever it is that is plaguing his mind. Awkwardness aside, Kurt is Blaine's friend, and Blaine deserves support.

"Hey," Kurt says as he walks into the open doorway of his closet. Blaine is sitting cross legged on his mattress, the files spread out in front of him along with at least five pieces of scrap paper all covered in nonsensical scribbles. The boy mouths silent words to himself, his brow pulled together permanently while the curls of his hair stick up in haphazard, gravity-defying clumps. Kurt waits for a response, but Blaine doesn't seem to hear him.

"_Hey_," Kurt repeats. Blaine snaps out of his trance and looks up confusedly, allowing Kurt a full view of his bloodshot eyes and the dark circles framing them, stormy gray in comparison to the pale pallor of his cheeks.

"Yes?" Blaine asks. Even his voice sounds cracked and tired.

Kurt eyes him warily, unsure of whether or not to press the matter seeing Blaine in his current state. In the end, he decides to try anyway.

"Blaine…is everything okay?" Kurt ventures cautiously. Blaine blinks twice and tilts his head to the side.

"Of course everything is okay. Why wouldn't it be okay? I'm fine. Why do you ask?"

Blaine answers almost too quickly, his words meshing together in one long statement that Kurt struggles to dissect and interpret.

"Blaine, how long have you been looking at those charts? Did you sleep at all last night?"

There is a long pause and just before Kurt asks again in the assumption that the boy didn't hear him, Blaine opens his mouth to speak. Except, this time Blaine's hands are shaking and his eyes are wide and terror filled and brimming with moisture. His voice quivers with a childlike fright that shoots icy currents of shock into Kurt's chest. The question had clearly broken through some sort of emotional barricade. Immediately, Kurt crouches down in front of his friend and pulls him into a hug, but even his gesture isn't enough to calm the boy, and Blaine continues his babbling in an unending stream.

"I don't think I slept, no, but this is more important, Kurt, because my sister is out there in some farm somewhere and I'm sitting here doing nothing to help her because I don't even know where she is right now and if I don't find her soon, I don't know what will happen, and it will be all my fault, and all I can think about is 'Oh my god, what if I didn't see her name on the list?', and I can't even imagine what would happen if I went to find her using the three that we already picked and none of them was her and I would be back to square one and she would still be held captive getting the life drained out of her, and oh god, she's only _eleven_, Kurt, how could they do this to her? what did she do to deserve this? it's all my fault, I should have been there to protect her, I should have saved her, Kurt, what have I done? it's all my fault, it's all my fault, all my fault, all my…"

Kurt waits patiently as Blaine breaks down and his lightning fast speech is replaced with silent, strangled sobs. He wraps his arms around Blaine tighter and rests his chin on the boy's wild curls.

"It's okay; my parents and my brother just left. You don't have to hold it in," Kurt murmurs soothingly. Blaine's breath catches once or twice before he lets loose a whimper and begins to cry much more audibly. After a few minutes pass of nothing more than Blaine's sobs and Kurt's gentle rocking back and forth, Kurt makes the conscious decision that he will skip school and stay home. Leaving Blaine alone like this would be nothing short of cruel.

Blaine's erratic breaths begin to calm after a while and his tears fall in less rapid succession. Kurt doesn't recall when exactly he'd starting rubbing Blaine's back in an attempt at comforting him, but he keeps doing it in hopes that it might help, that Blaine might find some sort of protection in it.

"K-Kurt, I'm so sorry." Blaine stutters, his voice muffled fabric of Kurt's shirt. Kurt lifts his chin off Blaine's head and looks down at him sadly.

"What are you sorry for? You've done nothing wrong." Kurt replies softly. "There was nothing you could have done, Blaine. If you had tried to stop them, they would've taken you too, and you wouldn't have had any chance of saving her."

"I…I know but…it's not that…" Blaine whispers. Kurt scrunches his brow in confusion.

"What do you mean?"

Blaine looks up at Kurt with unsure eyes.

"It's…about what you heard…a few days ago…"

Kurt stiffens in surprise and a faint blush creeps onto his cheeks. Blaine, who only notices Kurt's body language, misinterprets the reaction as disgust and looks down ashamedly, new tears forming in his eyes. He tries to move out of Kurt's hug but the taller boy holds him there even tighter, refusing to release him.

"Hey hey, whoa…" Kurt exclaims, "Blaine there's nothing to be embarrassed about, okay?"

Blaine hesitates before glancing back up again, and when he does, his expression holds a faint twinge of hope along with the uncertainty. Kurt gives a small smile before continuing.

"I mean…yes, I was a little surprised; I won't lie. I just…" Kurt falls silent for a second to choose his words carefully. "I'm not used to being treated that way, I guess. Nobody to my knowledge has ever thought of me like that. Back in Ohio, I was the outcast in my school. I was bullied for my sexuality every day." Kurt grimaces as flashes of his past rush to the forefront of his mind. The, horrid nicknames, the beatings, the dreaded slushies; they all mark a time period of his life he's dubbed 'The Dark Ages.' With a sigh, Kurt shoves the memories to the back of his mind where they belong.

"The outbreak hasn't exactly changed the people's view on homosexuality either, mind you. Yes, being in New York has changed things a lot for me; in general, I'm much more accepted than I was in my old home, but that doesn't mean it's all hunky dory. I've dated a couple guys, but they broke up with me on the account that I have as much sex appeal as a baby penguin." Kurt chuckles, though his tone shelters a bit of hurt. "So…when I heard you…and realized it was about _me_…I guess I was a little shocked."

Blaine stares openly at Kurt for quite a while before timidly asking, "So, you don't hate me? You're not mad?"

Kurt's eyes soften reassuringly.

"Blaine, I'm more flattered than offended. Don't worry about it okay?"

Blaine's lips pull up into a smile and the moisture that remains in his eyes glitters with relived happiness. He wraps his arms around Kurt's torso and hugs him vehemently, breathing a contented sigh.

"Thank god," he mumbles, and Kurt laughs.

The two stay that way for a few more seconds before Blaine speaks again, his voice soft and tender against Kurt's shoulder.

"I…I really like you Kurt," he admits. There is a moment of deliberation before Blaine pipes up again. "And trust me…you're not a baby penguin."

Kurt blinks a few times and stares at the wall behind Blaine's head.

"R…Really? You…like me?" he whispers. He feels the boy nod against him, feels the soft, dark curls brush against the side of his neck, smells the calming, familiar scent of what can only be described as _Blaine_ as it rushes past his nose.

Kurt's mind swirls in thought and, in less than a half of a moment, in less the time it takes for Blaine's unique heartbeat to finish one of its nervous pounds, he has a response. It seems so obvious now, it's funny. Kurt lets loose a warm chuckle and smiles.

"I really like you too, Blaine."

Rather than responding with words, Blaine tightens his arms around Kurt's torso. Kurt hears him sigh happily and feels an electrical rush as the warm air collides with his skin.

"And thanks for saying I'm not a penguin," Kurt adds to lighten atmosphere a little, fighting back another laugh. "That means a lot to me."

"No problem," Blaine responds, but his voice seems a bit choked. It's directly after this that Kurt feels cool, wet droplets hit his shoulder.

"Blaine, what's wrong?" Kurt asks, his voice panicked and stretched taut with concern. He pulls out of the hug and holds Blaine at shoulder length.

A cursory glance at the unbridled elation in Blaine's eyes, the brightness in them that gives the tears a whole new meaning, puts Kurt's fears at rest. Blaine's lips are pulled into a grin so wide it seems like it should hurt, but it doesn't appear to bother the boy in the slightest. Kurt swallows against the emotion building in his own throat and grins with him; Blaine's never looked so beautiful.

"Nothing, now." Blaine says simply. He reaches up and brushes his thumbs gently against Kurt jawbone, trailing his fingers across the soft, cool skin. The action is timid, nervous, but honest and sweet all the same. Kurt's stomach floods with flurries of heat and he fights to keep from giggling at the sudden surge of euphoria.

He see's Blaine's eyes flicker from his face to his mouth and, almost as if part of him was programmed to do this from the start, Kurt leans down and presses his lips soundly against Blaine's.

If he thought the brief contact from when they'd collided heads was good, he might as well be in heaven now.

Their mouths move against one another in slow synchronization as they both test this new exchange, each undulating movement sending jolts of current up and down Kurt's spine in an unending cycle. What starts slow begins to build in intensity like the feeding of a hot flame, and soon every prickle of feeling, every burst of want and heat, is more so. Blaine is first to take a breath and the sharp, needy gasp hits the deepest, hungriest part of Kurt like he's never experienced. The strength of it catches him off guard, but his small sound of surprise is cut short as Blaine repossesses his lips and pulls their bodies flush against each other, close enough that Kurt can feel the boy's harried heartbeat ricocheting off his own still, silent chest.

Blaine slides his right hand around the back of Kurt's head and up, his fingers curling and fisting in the soft, chestnut hair at the nape of his neck, while his left drops down to Kurt's hip and rests permanently there, letting his thumb draw aimless circles against the bone. He shifts in his position on the mattress, rising up on his bent knees until he looms over Kurt dominantly, never breaking the kiss that slowly, but steadily, rises in tempo.

Kurt begins to feel lost in all of it. Lost in the movements, lost in the sounds, lost in the _taste_. His mind completely succumbs to the relentless pleasure, the powerful electricity of every action. He lets himself drown in the feeling of closeness, of connection. He never wants it to stop.

But, as the world has doubtlessly proven, every good thing must come to an end sometime.

"Kurt! Good thing you're still home; I forgot my keys, have you see—_Oh my god, what the hell!_"

The thunderous voice breaks their moment like a stone through brittle glass.

Kurt hadn't even heard the front door open.

How had he not noticed? How had this happened?

They jerk back from the extended kiss and turn reflexively to see Kurt's step-brother's hulking form in the open doorway, Finn's eyes wide and his mouth hanging open in disbelief.

Kurt feels Blaine's heart pick up in tempo against him, feels the boy's warm skin grow cold and clammy, feels his hands begin to tremble where they now grip Kurt's own forearms like iron vices. It becomes painfully apparent that they are caught, that they are trapped.

Finn's gaze darts back and forth between them in the tense silence. Kurt almost whimpers, '_no_,' when the quarterback's eyes lock onto Blaine's, when they widen in horrid realization, when his mouth gapes open even farther before speaking four, completely dumbstruck words.

"Dude…it's a _human_!"

Finn blinks a few more times before his hand slowly creeps down and into his pocket, withdrawing his cell phone and flipping it open. Kurt feels a sickening panic race through him as he watches Finn's thumb lope across the keypad, its movements lucid and careful as if he were trying not to frighten them, like a child's cautious pursuit of a bird resting unaware on its perch. Each depression of the keys are sharp, hard punches to Kurt's gut.

9…1…1…

Things start happening. Quickly.

Kurt and Blaine break apart, Blaine throwing himself against the far wall of the closet while Kurt launches himself at his sibling.

"_Finn, no! Don't!_"

He collides with his step-brother and knocks both of them off their feet, their legs tangling violently on the wood floor as he twists and claws for the cell phone in Finn's giant-like hand. Finn still hasn't pressed call, and the dialed number shines mockingly from the screen just out of Kurt's reach. The quarterback remains sprawled beneath the doorway, stunned for a moment as his brain tries to process complex thoughts.

"Wait…you're…" Finn begins to mumble, and Kurt throws himself at the phone again, only to have it lifted just above his reaching fingers. Finn seems to be doing it almost subconsciously, his brow still furrowed and his eyes still pensive.

"_Finn, give me the goddamn phone!_" Kurt yells.

"Wait…are you _with_ the human?" Finn asks, his voice puzzled. Kurt can't reply; fear has trapped the air in his lungs, providing him only enough to produce a quiet squeak. Finn disregards the noise, returning to his reverie.

"So…you weren't trying to kill it…and you weren't going to turn it in…"

"_Finn—!" _Kurt chokes out. _"Finn, give it to me!_"

Suddenly, something seems to fit together in the behemoth of a boy, and his eyebrows rise to his hairline.

"Were you just going to keep it?" Finn asks in disbelief. Part of his expression seems almost hurt, like Kurt was doing wrong by not sharing. "Like a…like a pet? Dude, that's pretty weird…and I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to do that…"

Kurt takes in a few, hysteric breaths. "Finn…" he breathes, scrapping his original idea of forcefully obtaining the phone and resorting to calm reasoning. _It would be much easier if I could clear my head_, he thinks sourly. "Finn, I would _really_ appreciate it if you gave me the phone now."

"But…but Kurt you're not allowed to keep a human like that…" Finn replies, his tone conflicted.

"_Finn_, please just give me the phone…just give me the phone and I'll turn him in and everything will be fine." Kurt says from between his clenched teeth. He hears a quiet whimper from where Blaine is cowering in the closet and he winces with guilt. Obviously, he has no intention of giving Blaine up, and Kurt is a bit saddened that Blaine thinks he'd turn on him so easily, but Kurt understands that panic can do certain things to a person, can make them believe whatever it pleases. He hopes that once this is all over, Blaine will forgive him, that he will still award him the same trust as before.

Finn pauses for a moment, his brain riddled with indecision, before slowly extending the phone to Kurt.

But just as Kurt's fingers brush over the smooth, plastic surface, Finn snatches it back again.

"I can tell that you're lying," Finn states matter-of-factly, a slightly proud smile on his face. "Puck taught me that a few days ago. If a person looks down and to the left when they say something, they're telling a lie."

"_Oh for the love of f_—Finn, give it to me. Now."

"But, Kurt, I can't…"

"_Now_, Finn."

"Kurt, what you're doing is wrong, though…"

"Finn, who are you going to side with? Me, or the system?" Kurt blurts out, feeling strangely similar to the anti-government extremist from the web-site.

Finn hesitates, torn between the two choices.

"You're _are_ family…" Finn mumbles to himself, though loud enough so Kurt can hear. "But mom said always to trust the government…like, when my second cousin was arrested for stealing and mom said it was for the best because it taught him the importance of being a good citizen…"

Suddenly, Finn looks back up at Kurt, a steely resolve in his eyes.

"I can't let you have it, Kurt. I know you're family, but sometimes you just have to side with what's right."

Finn presses call.

Kurt's stomach sinks to the floor.

A horribly long moment passes where both Kurt and Finn are frozen in their spots, listening to the faint sound of ringing emanating from the small speaker.

"_This is 911, what is your emergency?_"

Finn raises the receiver to his lips. Kurt nearly begins to cry. There is nothing he can do.

"Yeah, I need some people over here now; my step-brother has actually been hiding a huma—"

_THWACK!_

And the phone clatters to the floor, the impact of the fall cracking the screen and ending the conversation.

And along with it comes a shoe.

Before Kurt even begins to process what just happened, Finn collapses to the floor in a heap, his mammoth-like body curled unnaturally in on itself.

"Wh…what?" Kurt squeaks before his eyes fall on the trembling form of Blaine off to the side.

If Kurt had been paying better attention to his peripherals, he would have seen the dark haired boy dart quickly out of the closet with the clog held high, aim, and then chuck the heavy, wooden thing with as much force his body could muster directly at Finn's forehead. The force of the blow was enough to knock even Finn, the burliest of the Hudson-Hummel family, completely cold.

"Did you just…was that you..?" Kurt babbles, still trying to sort out everything that had just transpired in less than five minutes. It seemed too much for such a small amount of time.

Blaine nods numbly and then walks over to the cell phone, taking one moment of deliberation before stomping on it with his heel and crushing the device into tiny fragments.

But, even with the phone gone, the damage had been done.

"K-Kurt…" Blaine stammers. "I need to go."

Kurt blinks once. "What? Wait, huh? No! No, you can't go…I can't just have you go back out there and…Blaine where _would _you go? There's nowhere else that's safe around here—"

"Kurt, this place isn't safe anymore either." Blaine interrupts. His voice is empty and desolate. "The authorities will be here in a few minutes, and if I don't leave, I'll be caught. And I have to save my sister. I can't let her down, Kurt, I _can't_."

Kurt stands in silence for a moment before speaking, his words deliberate and sharp. "Well you're not as smart as I thought you were if you think I'm letting you go by yourself."

"Kurt…what are you—?"

"I'm coming with you."

Blaine's eyes bulge.

"What? Are you crazy? Kurt, you can't be serious. You have a _family_ here. You can't just up and leave. Plus, I would feel guilty, too. I would be uprooting you from everything you know. It's a harsh, cruel world out there and I would be beside myself if you ever were caught in any danger—"

Kurt breaks Blaine's rant with a scoff.

"I can fend for myself, thanks. Four years of torture in public high school has made me pretty scrappy. And also, I've been living with my family for my _entire _life. It's time I got out of the house don't you think?"

The boys fall quiet as Kurt's argument marinates, and the second hand of the kitchen analog clock grows louder as it rounds the numbers. Blaine's eyes flicker between Kurt, Finn, and the window overlooking the street outside.

"Time's ticking, Blaine." Kurt says pointedly. "Either you want help, or you don't want me with you. Make a choice. Because soon, you won't have one. Like you said, they're coming."

Blaine gives Kurt a heartbroken stare. "Of course I want you with me, Kurt. I always will…but…"

"Then let me come with you." Kurt says, but this time his voice is absent of its edge. It's pleading, begging…

There are a few beats before Blaine swallows nervously, and his eyes begin to gleam with a hint of optimism. "Okay," he breathes.

Kurt sports one of the largest smiles that have ever graced his face.

"Great," he begins. "Now, that we've got that over with, we need to get our asses moving." Kurt cracks his knuckles quickly and rolls his shoulders before his features shift to businesslike determination.

"Blaine, there are two empty backpacks in the hallway closet. Get them. Once you have them start filling the packs up with all the non-perishable food items you can find, along with two or three water bottles. After you finish, bring them to me and I'll stuff in the money and clothes. Got everything? Alright now _move_."

The boys dart away in opposite directions, throwing open doors, tossing things across rooms, emptying drawers, cleaning out cabinets. All that was once organized lies in scattered piles and all that was disorganized anyway is simply added on to. In under three minutes, the boys have two filled packs, bulging with supplies.

For a moment, the two just stand there staring at them, as if the two packs represented the end of one life and the start of a new one.

And then Blaine bends down and picks them up, throwing his over his shoulder and handing the other to Kurt.

"Are you sure about this?" he asks one last time.

Kurt takes a deep breath and nods. "I've never been more sure about anything in my life."

Blaine gives him a small, sad smile and reaches out to take his hand.

"Then let's go."

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I always depict Finn to be a bumbling idiot and I don't know why. **

**Please review!**


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N: So the reason this update took longer than I'd hoped is because I haven't been feeling very inspired recently. As Stephen King puts it in his book **_**Misery**_**, I didn't have "the gotta" that one needs to write a good story. Anyway, today it came back for some reason—probably because Glee came back yesterday, but whatever—and I finished the next installment. It's a bit shorter than usual but I felt that it was a good stopping point at the end. The next chapter will pick up immediately after the end of this one. **

* * *

><p>It doesn't take long before they start to hear the sirens.<p>

In fact, the high pitched sounds begin their squeal just as the boys shut the door of Kurt's apartment.

Blaine stops cold, his face paling to a deathly white. The boys still have their fingers tightly intertwined, and Kurt can feel Blaine's palms growing clammy with anxiety. If Kurt were to possess a heartbeat, he estimates that it would be beating almost as fast, and almost as frantically, as the boy's next to him.

"I…I thought we had more time…" Blaine whispers, his lips barely moving.

Kurt moves to grasp Blaine by the shoulders, leaving the boy's hand to quiver at his side.

"Hey, look at me," Kurt says, his tone soft but firm. "Don't panic, alright? We're going to make it. We'll figure something out."

He lifts his right hand to cup Blaine's cheek gently, his thumbs massaging circles into the whitened skin. It brushes briefly over the corner of Blaine's lips and the boy's cheeks grow light pink beneath the touch. Blaine nods numbly, but his deadened stare remains fixed in front of him, much to Kurt's disappointment and concern.

"I won't let them hurt you," Kurt says with resolve, squaring his jaw and regarding Blaine with a look so intensely emotional he sees a small shudder pass through the shorter boy's rigid body, finally registering something other than fear.

Before the moment slips away from his fingertips, Kurt leans in quickly and presses his lips hard against Blaine's, pulling their bodies flush together and gripping his fingers roughly in the soft, dark curls. The kiss only lasts for a few seconds, but as he pulls away he can see the glint in Blaine's eyes, can sense the shot of adrenaline rushing through his veins. He notices Blaine's face is no longer as pale as a sheet, rather, it is a healthy red, and the fear induced trance is no longer present.

"Are you okay now?" Kurt asks, his voice a bit breathless.

"Y-yeah, I'm fine…"

"Good…now come on, follow me."

They take off down the hallway, turning corners with a slight caution, wary of the unknown that lies just around each one. Kurt knows the floor plan of the building well enough he could walk it blindfolded, and he leads Blaine in the direction of the elevators, stopping abruptly once they reach the doors.

"Kurt…Kurt, why don't we use the stairs? I have a bad feeling…" Blaine's voice dies just as they hear distant sounds of footsteps and the slam of a door, obviously someone returning to their home.

Once they are sure they are out of earshot, Kurt replies softly, "We wouldn't make it out in time. And the police are going to be stationed at the stairs too, so no matter which we choose we're going to have to deal with some of them."

"But…what about the cameras inside?" Blaine asks, his voice carrying a slight tremor of fear from before. He eyes the doors of the elevator shaft with carnal distrust. "They'll be able to see us as we go down, right?"

Kurt considers this carefully, his brow furrowing in thought.

"Here, hold on," he says finally, slipping out of the straps of his backpack and dropping it to the floor. He bends over and yanks at one of the zippers, pushing his hand in the small pocket and rummaging a bit before pulling out a pair of sunglasses and handing them wordlessly to Blaine.

"They're aviators, so you'll be stylish _and_ people won't be able to see your eyes. Win-win as far as I'm concerned."

Blaine slides them doubtfully onto the bridge of his nose, swallowing nervously as they sheath his entire world with darker tint. He feels uncomfortable wearing them, much preferring the rawness of normal sight and the trust in his own, pure vision. Shadows cloud every corner that was once only slightly shaded and he frowns at how each spot ripples in the curve of the lenses as he moves, like quiet monsters waiting to catch him when he blinks.

"Why do people even _own _these anymore?" Blaine mumbles to himself. "It's freaking _night_ all the time…what purpose do they even serve?"

Kurt snorts in reply and quips, "An accessory is and accessory, no matter their function...or their lack of one."

Blaine rolls his eyes, hiding his apprehension beneath the thick skin of sarcasm. He glances around the hallway, adjusting to the dim light filtering through the mirror like glass.

"Kurt…are you sure?" he begins again, his voice higher pitched than normal.

"Everything will be fine," Kurt replies stubbornly, jaw firmly set. "They're looking for suspicious behavior, Blaine. As long as you don't act like you should be wearing a black jumpsuit and a ski mask, I think we'll be okay."

"I'm not robbing a _bank_; I'm running for my _life_. Feel free to say otherwise, but I think that's a whole different behavior pattern they'll be looking for."

"In their minds, you _are _robbing them of something," Kurt retorts. Blaine shoots him a questioning look and Kurt answers with his hands poised on his hips.

"You. You're robbing them of _you_. I don't know if you realize how desperate we are for blood, but it's gotten crazy. Blaine, you've got to pull yourself together and do this with conviction or else they'll find you like a drug-sniffing dog. I need you to just…pretend for a few minutes, okay?" Kurt takes a deep breath and draws his hand across his forehead, closing his eyes to calm down his slowly mounting nerves.

"Just pretend that you're supposed to be here. Pretend that we're just two people, that you and I are going camping for the weekend, and we're holding hands like a couple, and we're a little confused at all the commotion downstairs as we walk out, but we want to have a good time so we disregard it and keep going…" Kurt opens his eyes and gazes at Blaine pleadingly, his hint of desperation a razor edge cutting through Blaine's doubt like a knife through warm butter. "Just, create a scenario in your head, and _believe _it. Believe that it's true. Can you do that? Please, can you do that for me?"

After a beat of hesitation, Blaine nods silently.

He takes a deep breath and shifts in his stance, standing straighter and taller and lifting his chin. Glancing at the ceiling for a moment, he sends up a silent prayer before clearing his throat gruffly and, with a sharp tug, secures the straps on his pack, turning to Kurt with a fabricated—though convincing— smile.

"Ready for the great outdoors, hun?" he asks with mock enthusiasm. Kurt laughs a bit in reply, but stares at Blaine with a mix of relief and affection.

"You're strong, you know?" he says softly, taking Blaine's hand in his own and giving it a gentle squeeze. He holds his gaze for a moment longer before turning and pressing the button for the elevator.

The wait for the car is its own form of torture, but Blaine refuses to lapse back into fear. The only indication of nervousness is the tightening of his hand in Kurt's, the grip becoming nearly white knuckled as the large metal doors slide open to reveal a mercifully empty compartment.

"Keep in character," Kurt murmurs as they step inside.

Blaine has to force himself not to search for the camera mounted in one of the corners. Instead he busies himself by pulling Kurt closer against his chest, running his unoccupied hand along the thin strip of the boy's lower back where his shirt had ridden up with the bag. Blaine leans in closely and rests his forehead against Kurt's, breathing deeply and taking comfort in the clean, homey scent that envelops his senses. Kurt hums contentedly and leans in to capture Blaine's mouth in a lingering kiss, his fingers toying with the few wisps of hair at the nape of his neck.

"Everything will be okay. I promise." Kurt whispers almost inaudibly against Blaine's barely quivering lips. The consistent ping as they pass each floor echoes against the steel-plated walls, crashing like symbols in Blaine's mind after each tone.

_Ping…ping…ping…ping…_

And suddenly, before he can even take one more breath in preparation, the car jolts to a stop and the doors part to reveal the too-tastefully decorated lobby.

Blaine's heart practically drops out of his chest and onto the floor.

Because, within the pompously arranged main level, with its pristine lines and lint-less couches and geometric chandeliers, _hordes_ of policemen are gathered, waiting and armed.

They stand there in anticipation, their navy uniforms crisply pressed and their badges splaying shards of light against the polished tile floors as they shift and mumble, eyes narrowed and flickering throughout the room with sharp suspicion.

And all of them, every last man and woman, look absolutely _ravenous. _

Kurt just manages to contain a yelp of pain as Blaine practically crushes his hand. As they step out of the elevator, he consciously glances around with feigned curiosity, shoving back the alarm rising in his chest and calling upon his acting expertise from high school to appear the innocent passerby. Every single face in the room snaps around and every pair of sinister eyes becomes trained on the two of them, rigid bodies unmoving, focused, hungry…

"What's all this about?" Kurt hears Blaine ask, his tone light and faintly concerned. Kurt chances a glance at Blaine's expression and finds the boy's features to be surprisingly calm and controlled.

But he knows better. His position in relation to Blaine allows him to look through the gap in the side of the sunglasses, and the hollow cavern in his chest grows cold as he sees how widened Blaine's eyes are, nearly bulging with raw, palpable _terror_. It is a wonder that Blaine isn't shaking, that he isn't collapsing into a symphony of his own screams like he probably wishes to, that he isn't breaking away in a sprint towards the tall, glass doors that suddenly seem _so far away._

Kurt becomes privy to one thing as they pause in the path of the closing elevator door.

Blaine is an _extraordinary _actor.

The fact that Blaine's face is deathly pale only adds to his believability as they begin to make small strides through the crowd, their hands joined tightly together despite the slickness of Blaine's sweat on their palms. They keep a safe distance from each statue-like person, Kurt praying fervently that they not hear Blaine's motoring heartbeat, the one part of his façade the poor boy can't control.

The crackling of a radio shatters the silence and makes Kurt and Blaine jump a little, though the others appear to have no reaction, their already narrowed eyes creasing into small slits as the boys pass.

"Either of you heard rumors of a human refugee in this place?" one of them asks from behind.

Kurt and Blaine freeze mid-step, and Blaine takes a quiet, shaky inhale, the cracks in his composure slowly starting to expand and crumble at the edges. Kurt rubs his thumb in soothing circles along the back of his hand and, thankfully, Blaine seems to regain his grip on himself. They turn around to answer just before the length of their pause could be considered suspicious.

"Pardon me? A _human_? Why would there be a _human _here, of all places? This is a luxury apartment building." Kurt answers a bit snidely, his tone aloof and sprinkled with conceit.

Blaine pipes in after him, placing a hand on Kurt's forearm.

"Hun, that's rude," he chides softly, though loud enough that most around them can hear. "I bet it could happen."

Blaine's hand trembles ever so slightly against Kurt's skin.

"Oh _please_," Kurt continues, desperately trying to draw attention away from Blaine for a moment so the boy can recuperate. "How could a human possibly survive in one of the most populated cities in the continental United States? The odds would be astronomical."

The policeman from before steps forward from his group, his wide-set frame and squared jaw intimidating to the two smaller boys, and suddenly they find themselves moving closer to one another, their grasp tightening as the burly man regards them with a slightly disgusted leer.

"Well, I know it sounds _astronomical_, but it's true. Someone in this building must hate their country because they're knowingly housing a human and sheltering it from authorities." The man shakes his head, glaring at the wall behind Kurt and Blaine. "People can be so selfish these days. There are other citizens _starving to death_ while they play around with a human like it's their own personal toy. Keeping it all to themselves…could probably feed on it whenever they wanted…just…selfish..."

By this time the officer's eyes are glazed with something closely identifiable to _lust_.

Kurt is close enough to Blaine to see the sheen of cold sweat beading along his hairline, to hear the barely concealed, wheezing gasps stealing past his teeth.

They start backing away, Kurt nodding to the rest of the police who seem to have lapsed into their own trance-like fantasies.

As they pass by one who idly licks her lips, Blaine can't help but let out a choked whimper. Kurt quickly covers it with a loud "Ahem", smiling sheepishly to all whose gazes snap back to the present.

"Well, I hope you find whoever is doing this. I for one think they're despicable for even _considering _such a thing, what with the blood crisis and all," he says with a sense of finality, turning back toward the door and almost towing Blaine along as well.

They manage to make it all the way across the lobby and out of the crowd. The front glass doors lay within arm's reach and they force themselves to move slowly, to not throw out their arms barge through. Just as Kurt's fingers touch the handles though, the man's low voice echoes through the room, stopping them cold in their tracks.

"Say, where are you two going with the bags?"

Kurt pauses and swallows hard. He feels the warmth of Blaine's previously drenched hand turn icy against his.

"Camping. We've made a vow to do it every weekend," he finally replies, though to an avid listener, his voice would come across a tad bit strained. Fortunately, most of the policemen seem to be too distracted by the thought of blood to pay full attention, and they take Kurt's statement as truth.

_Most_ being the key term. The wide-set man gives Kurt a skeptical eye, his lips drooping into a frown.

"You don't seem like the camping type," he says pointedly, his gaze colder than Kurt's liking.

A twinge of irritation shoots through the auburn-haired boy and Kurt throws him an equally chilling stare. Even with the new era of species, ignorance has not been fully extinguished, and every encounter with it leaves Kurt with a sour taste in his mouth and an annoyance equal to that of a splinter up his nail.

"Yeah, well, at least we're trying, right?" he nearly hisses, turning back again and pulling the door open. He uses his thumb to tap on the back of Blaine's hand, reminding him not to run just yet. Reminding him to be patient. He can feel the cool air from the streets hitting his face like a gift from heaven, can hear the sounds of it rushing along the faces of buildings and through the tunnel like street beneath them. Freedom is _so close_ he can taste it. But if they screw up now, all is lost. Ushering Blaine through the door first just to get him out, he uses his free hand to sweep back his coif again with an essence of pomp, smirking to himself as he does.

"Have a good day," he shoots over his shoulder before finally, _finally_ walking out.

* * *

><p><strong>Please review! They keep me so motivated, I'm serious. Help me maintain the "gotta" you guys!<strong>


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N: This update is sooo long! (13 pages on Word) I hope you like it! Oh and guess what? My birthday is today! Yay! **

* * *

><p>They make into the parking garage before Blaine finally breaks down.<p>

One second, they're walking hand in hand to Kurt's dad's car. The next , Blaine is collapsing to his knees on the concrete floor, his arms gripping his sides, nails clawing into the fabric of his shirt as he attempts and fails to control the hysteric, choking breaths that shake through to his core. Startled tears are falling one after another and staining the ground where they splash, trailing down from his widened eyes and dripping onto the inside lenses of his aviators where each jerk of his torso shakes them free. Kurt stands for a moment in shock, his mind still numb from their encounter with the police only minutes before. It's only after he hears Blaine start to blubber frantic apologies that he snaps into action, bending down to the boy's level and pulling him into a tight embrace. Blaine instinctively leans into him, his face burying itself in Kurt's shoulder so Kurt can feel his every pained, stuttering breath.

"Hey…it's alright…it's okay…shh…" Kurt whispers in Blaine's ear, twisting his head to plant soft kisses in the shorter boy's curls.

"I'm s-sorry Kurt, I c-can't... it's s-so s-stupid…d-don't know why I'm s-so…I-I don't know why I'm a-acting like this—" Blaine babbles between each sharp inhale, his hands trembling violently where they clutch Kurt's shoulders. Kurt shushes him again softly, reaching up to rest his hand comfortingly on the back of Blaine's head.

"You don't have to explain yourself to me; I understand. That was scary. That was _very _scary."

"'s just th-that they were all _there_, a-and I just—I just _panicked _and—"

"Blaine, it's okay, we're out of there."

"N-no, I _know_, 's just…god K-Kurt, I w-was so close to just…to just _losing _it, a-and…if I hadn't kept myself in one p-piece…"

Kurt gently pulls back and places his index finger against Blaine's lips, immediately quieting the boy into a quivering silence.

"It's all over," He says simply, his lips curling up in a small, hopeful smile. A beat of silence passes before Blaine gives one in return and, as strained as it is, the small gesture fills Kurt with a warm glow that radiates to his fingertips.

They stand up together, Kurt's hand resting firmly on the small of Blaine's back to steady him, and begin walking again to the car. Thankfully, their level of the garage appears empty, though they can hear the sounds of activity below and above them. Shutting car doors echo periodically through the structure, the sounds reverberating off the walls with the decibel level of a gunshot. Blaine can't help but flinch occasionally and, when an especially loud crack shreds through his nerves, Kurt's hand moves from his back to wrap around his opposite hip, pulling him against his side in an effort of calm.

Blaine clears his throat after a while and wipes his face with the back of his hand.

"…are you sure it's alright to take your Dad's car?" he says meekly. Kurt turns to him a gives a light eye-roll.

"Please, we barely even use this car; my parents take the subway to work anyway. It's exclusively for travel…which we never end up doing." Kurt lets out a small sigh, gazing off into the distance. "I think…I think he bought it as more of a security crutch. He wants to be able to have that second option if…well, if we ever get out of here."

Blaine's brows furrow in confusion.

"What do you mean?"

Kurt glances at him, his expression only the slightest bit sad.

"We moved here because it was a necessity," Kurt explains, the corner of his lips set in a small frown. "Not because we actually wanted to. My dad has this…this dream that once society becomes stable again and once there's no reason to be so close to the government, we could move back to Ohio."

Blaine blinks slowly for a moment, not quite grasping the underlying meaning.

"Okay…" he starts slowly. "I mean, I'll be honest and say that I don't think society will _ever_ become stable again…but if it did, would moving back be so bad?"

Kurt swallows hard and replies, his voice strained and high-pitched. "Er…no…no I guess not…It's just…"

"Just what?" Blaine asks softly, giving Kurt an expectant stare. Kurt lowers his head solemnly, his eyes becoming permanently fixed on his designer shoes.

"It's just that, maybe going back wouldn't be such a good idea. All…all of my childhood memories are there…my first steps, my first musical, my first dance recital…the first time I realized I liked boys…the day I came out to my dad…every single monumental memory of my life…my past life…"

Kurt pauses and takes a slow breath. "My _past_ life, Blaine. That's where it lies, in ruins. Every ransacked household, demolished school, bullet-sprayed building…they all represent something that is in the past. Going back there, trying to rebuild it all and pretend like it just never happened…I just don't feel like that would be right…"

Kurt trails off uncomfortably. They walk silently for a minute, Blaine's chest aching from the way Kurt's features are set in a permanent reflection of sadness, every footstep seeming to drag a little more than it had before on the grime covered floor.

"…I understand," Blaine murmurs, pulling his arm around Kurt's waist in the same fashion the taller boy had done with him. "I couldn't go back home…I just couldn't…it would be too painful."

"But you had it worse off than I did. You were driven from your home; we left voluntarily," Kurt reminds him quietly. Blaine gives a small, noncommittal shrug.

"Sure, I guess if one was trying to argue a point he would say that, for me, it would be more difficult. But that doesn't mean that it wouldn't be difficult for you too. You had a life there too, Kurt."

Kurt gives an unenthusiastic nod, his free hand not resting on Blaine's hip reaching into his pocket and pulling out a set of keys. Attached the bundle of metal hangs the remote control of the car. Kurt's slender fingers wrap fluidly around the device, his thumb pressing the 'unlock' key and illuminating the taillights of a nearby vehicle.

Blaine, even through the lingering haze of panic and fear that still clouds his senses, raises his eyebrows in surprise.

"That's a BMW Supercharge 750. These things are priced in the ballpark of seventy grand…Kurt, how did you get one?" He asks, his voice drawn out in awe.

Kurt's lips twitch up into a small smile.

"My dad has a passion for cars; he knows a few people. You know, we used to build some from scrap metal back in Ohio. He owned a shop there and…and he really loved that place."

"My dad and I rebuilt a car together once," Blaine says quietly.

"Oh really? What model?"

Blaine rubs the back of his neck and sports an uncomfortable grimace.

"I don't really remember…or care, for that matter. He only did it as an attempt to 'straighten me out'."

Kurt's face falls a little, his former excitement dying. "Oh…I'm sorry…"

"It's alright. I still loved him." Blaine murmurs. His eyes lose focus and stare ahead of him, his features lost and sad. "He was a good father…in the end…"

Kurt sinks into thought, idly fiddling with the hem of Blaine's sweater, his arm seemingly unwilling to let the boy go free as they stand stationary behind the unlocked car.

"I guess, in retrospect, that's all that matters. Right?" he murmurs after a while. "Making up for it in the end…"

A feeling of concern creeps into Blaine's chest as he examines Kurt, how the boy's face remains drawn, a look of regret creating shadows over the formerly bright gleam in his eyes.

"Kurt…" Blaine begins warily. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing…just…" Kurt takes a breath and looks back up at the car. "I never thought to leave behind a note…to let them know I'm okay."

Everything shifts back into place and the confusion evaporates, leaving Blaine with a heavy, sickening pang of guilt. He supposes that before, in their harried rush to get out of the apartment, he had never really taken the time to consider _all_ of what Kurt is sacrificing for him, to be fully aware of how much he would be indebted to him. After all, Kurt is uprooting his life with his family to be with him—not that Blaine understands why; surely he alone cannot be Kurt's reason. But nevertheless, the anxious harrowing, regret Kurt dons is enough to force Blaine to ask the question.

"Kurt, are you absolutely sure about this? If you have any doubts at all, you really don't have to—"

"Blaine, stop it," Kurt commands a bit harshly, his face changing and solidifying into a look of cool determination. "I'm far from happy here. And I wouldn't have said yes to coming with you if I didn't mean it. I keep my promises."

They hold a heavy stare for a moment, calculating, reassuring, promising, until finally Kurt takes another deep breath and fixes his gaze on the car, his brow set with conviction.

"Let's get out of here," he says, pulling away from Blaine and striding over to the driver's side door.

Blaine stands frozen in his place, watching as the car purrs to life with the graceful power only seventy grand can buy, until Kurt leans out his window and fixes him with an expectant stare.

"Getting in anytime soon?" he quips.

Blaine nods jerkily and hurries over to the passenger side, pulling on the sleek, black handle of the door and slipping into the low mounted seat.

The air inside the cab is warm and almost comforting, a promise of salvation soon to come. Blaine buckles his seatbelt and leans into the soft leather upholstery, letting his head fall back against the headrest as he fists his eyes, still red and stinging from a few minutes prior.

"You alright?" he hears Kurt ask softly. Blaine nods in reply, suddenly feeling drowsy as the adrenaline begins to wear away.

"M' fine…you're right; let's just get out of here."

Kurt gives a small smile before revving the engine and yanking the gear back to reverse. Blaine feels himself slipping as Kurt pulls out of the space, and the last thing that crosses his mind before he feels the blackness take him is an image of his sister, smiling and dancing in their living back home.

The flash of dim memory plagues his conscience and, before he can stop it, he finds himself dreaming…remembering…

* * *

><p>"<em>Blaine, watch what I can do! Look, look, look!"<em>

"…_that's nice Kay…."_

"_But you weren't even _looking!_ Blaaaine, watch this, pleeease…"_

_He sighs and leans up from his position over his homework, flashing an irritated glare before composing himself and smiling patronizingly. Kadie doesn't seem to buy it and in response sticks her tongue out, scrunching her nose in a way that, to someone outside the family, could be considered cute. Not to Blaine, of course; he only finds it annoying. _

"_What do you want to show me, Kay? I'm really busy," he says gesturing to the pile of papers resting on the desk in front of him. _

_She huffs and crosses her arms dramatically, spinning around on her heel until her back is to him. "I'm not showing you anymore. You're a meanie. Meanie's don't get to see cool stuff."_

_Blaine sighs again, rubbing his temples with his fingers. He takes a breath and forces an even larger, more genuine smile. _

"_C'mon Kay, I really want to see it. I'm sorry for before. Please?"_

_Kadie turns her head halfway, keeping her small body still and facing forward. "Say you're sorry for being a big-fat-meanie-head," she pouts stubbornly. _

"_I'm sorry for being a big, fat, bumbling, meanie-head," Blaine says, a real grin creeping into his fake one. His sister giggles at the new word and speaks it allowed a few times, testing it on her tongue. _

"_Bumbing…Bum-_ble_…"_

_She giggles again and then spins around to face Blaine, all traces of negativity gone. Throwing up her arms, she looks at Blaine excitedly, her eyes wide with fundamental happiness that even Blaine can't help warming to. _

"_Ready, ready? Watch this."_

_After she is sure Blaine is paying sufficient attention to her, she tumbles over sideways, catching herself on her arms and whirling upside-down in an impressive—especially for her age—cartwheel. _

_She lands on her feet again a bit clumsily, but steadies herself just in time before colliding with one of the pieces of antique furniture. After she is certain of her footing, she turns to Blaine again and fixes him with an expectant grin. _

_Blaine laughs a little at her expression and begins to clap loudly, whistling and whooping in a way that makes Kadie bounce in place joyfully before giving a low bow, her nose nearly touching her kneecap but for a couple inches of air. _

"_Bravo, Bravo," Blaine chuckles, shaking his head slightly at how quickly his sister's charms can win him over. _

"_I showed Daddy today and guess what he said, Blaine? He said I was 'going places'. Isn't that so cool!"_

_Blaine's still-clapping hands stutter to a stop. _

"_Oh…that's…that's really great, Kay," he says, his tone a bit pained. But Kadie doesn't seem to notice this time, twirling like a ballerina and singing snippets of the Italian opera their mother periodically played on their speaker system. _

"_Well, I guess you can do your homework now," Kadie chirps after a while. She waves goodbye to Blaine before taking a running leap out of the room, landing underneath the doorframe and then spinning back out into the hallway, humming words she doesn't know the translations to._

_Blaine is left with a cold, hollow feeling in his chest. _

_His father had never praised him like that. _

_Even after all of his piano recitals, all of his community plays, he'd received no encouragement for the future. Every comment had been along the lines of, "that was good, but…" or, "a little rough…" or even, "unfortunately, I was on a conference call the entire time. Maybe we can buy the DVD of it. What do you say?"_

_Even with his father's promise, Blaine hadn't had the heart to say that the play 'West Side Story'—in which he had been cast as leading man—had not been taped anyway. _

_He sits in his chair, frowning at the memories his younger self, the 'him' who had constantly been vying for his father's attention, for his acknowledgement, for anything…_

_Letting out a shaky sigh and turning back around in his chair, he refocuses his attention on his homework._

_Chapter two, The Neurological Effects of Emotions on the Brain…_

* * *

><p>The darkness in which he wakes does nothing to help orient himself, and soon Blaine's gaze is darting around the enclosed space, taking in small details such as the strap of fabric secured across his lap and shoulders, the handle of a door on his right side, along with the button controlling window function. It doesn't take long for the not-so-distant past to come rushing back, and he immediately turns his head left, smiling faintly at the sight of Kurt's form driving the car, at how the slender curve of his back and smooth profile of his face appear silhouetted in the low light shining from the middle of the dashboard. Blaine realizes that that light is actually an LCD screen, and he doesn't bother looking straight into it, knowing it would start his head pounding.<p>

After reluctantly tearing his eyes away from Kurt, Blaine glances around at the space again, his brow scrunching in confusion as he notices that all the windows, even the front and back windshields, are completely, opaquely black. Even at night, a view of outside would be available with the glare of the car's headlights. A feeling of being underground creeps over him and he swallows nervously.

"Kurt?" he asks quietly. "What's wrong with the car? Why can't I see anything?"

He hears Kurt shift in his seat before answering. "Oh, Blaine, you're awake. Guess that means I can play some music now, huh?"

There's a faint click of a button and then the car fills with the voice of Madonna, one of her post-plague albums with which Blaine has little familiarity.

"Kurt, why can't I see anything out of the windows?" he asks a bit more clearly. Kurt is humming absently with the song and Blaine barely see's the boy as he motions to the windshield with a flourish of his hand.

"You mean this? This is daytime driving mode. Every car comes equipped with it now. It blocks the sunlight from outside and uses a three-sixty camera mounted on the roof to give me a view of the road around me. See?" he points at the LCD screen Blaine had neglected to examine. After squinting painfully for a moment until his eyes adjust, Blaine see's what Kurt described: a screen showing a moving picture of the sun-drenched road on which they are driving, spilt into thirds to show the front, back, and side views at the same time, just like the driving arcade games Blaine used to play sometimes as a child.

"Wow, that's…incredible…" Blaine says. Now that his eyes are adjusted enough, he can see Kurt grin in response.

"I know. My dad invented it," Kurt continues proudly. "Well, he invented the prototype and then various car companies refined it, but he had the original idea. That's why we could afford that apartment."

Blaine nods in astonishment, still staring at the screen which shows a long, straight, empty road.

"No one else is driving?" he comments, shooting Kurt a questioning glance.

"People still prefer to drive at night; there's no risk of being exposed to the sun…and I guess it's just easier psychologically knowing that if you get in a wreck and are thrown out of your car, you won't get cooked like an egg…" Kurt adds with a grimace. "But it's not uncommon to see a few people out and about during the a.m. Mostly car enthusiasts who like to speed."

Blaine nods again and moves his gaze away from the screen, his skull beginning to ache persistently.

"How long was I asleep?" he asks, changing the subject. He can't remember what time they left, but the classically decorative analog clock underneath the radio glows one in the afternoon.

Kurt raises his eyebrows and smirks. "Oh, maybe around ten hours, give or take one."

Blaine blanches, his mouth popping open gracelessly.

"_Ten hours_? We've been driving for _ten hours_?" he exclaims, his eyes flitting back to the LCD screen and searching the picture for any clue to their surroundings. "Kurt…where_ are_ we?"

Kurt shrugs his shoulders, the smug look draining from his features.

"I…I don't know. I've just been driving aimlessly so far. I think the last city we drove through was Raleigh, North Carolina…but I can't be sure. I might have stopped looking at one point." Kurt looks apologetically at Blaine, his eyes tired and a little unfocused.

"Kurt, do you need me to drive?" Blaine asks suddenly, though he's pretty sure he wouldn't know how to operate the car in daytime mode. Kurt shakes his head wearily, hands readjusting his loosening grip on the wheel.

"It's alright. But if you don't mind, could we maybe find as rest stop somewhere? There are new one's built now that are specifically equipped for the daytime…and I just need to stand for a minute and stretch…wake myself up, you know?"

"Oh okay…yeah that's fine," Blaine says anxiously. Kurt senses his hesitation and attempts to sooth his fears.

"Don't worry; not many people use them at this time. And if there are people, they won't notice you. They're all as tired as I am."

Blaine agrees silently, turning away and beginning to search the compartments in the car.

"Do you have a map somewhere or…?"

"Oh, no, don't worry about that; I have a GPS."

Blaine blinks once or twice before fixing Kurt with a strange stare.

"Then…why didn't you use it to find out where we were?" he asks, hoping not to come off as rude to the boy who is saving him. Kurt doesn't seem to mind, instead pointing to the dashboard at a small speaker mounted just above the clock, as if the motion explained everything.

"I would have woken you up and I wanted you to get some sleep. You've been through a lot," Kurt explains before leaning in towards the speaker. Just as Blaine prepares to ask what he is doing, Kurt opens his mouth and speaks directly at the small piece of metal, his face straight and almost bored-looking, as if what he is doing is no more than routine.

"Minnie, where is the closest UV-protected rest stop from here?"

Blaine's face screws up with confusion and a small bit of alarm. He briefly considers the possibility that Kurt may be delirious with exhaustion, that there is a perfectly normal explanation to why Kurt is talking to a car. What he does not expect is for something to talk back.

He jumps in his seat when the metallic, female voice emanates from the same speaker, responding with unnerving fluidity to Kurt's question.

"_The closest UV-protected rest stop from your location is approximately fifteen miles west, or nine and a half minutes with your current speed of eighty-two miles an hour and low traffic concentration. Would you like to be directed verbally to the requested destination?"_

"Yes; thank you Minnie."

Kurt leans back in his seat again and adjusts his position, getting comfortable again in the backrest. After a moment, he seems to notice Blaine's silence and turns to him. Upon viewing Blaine's dumbfounded expression, he asks, "What?"

"Er…nothing…" Blaine squeaks, looking away and feeling ridiculously foolish. To distract from the awkward quiet, he comments, "So, you named it Minnie?"

"For Garmin. You know, Gar-_min_? They still make GPS's Blaine."

"Yeah…yeah I know…" Blaine says softly. He sighs and runs his fingers through his hair. "I'm so out of the loop."

Kurt chuckles.

"Yep."

They smile at each other before Minnie begins to speak again, directing Kurt to another road and startling Blaine with its unsettlingly human-like mannerisms.

"You'll get used it, don't worry," Kurt says with another smug grin. Blaine scoffs half-heartedly before resting his head against the window frame.

"I hope."

* * *

><p>The occasional direction from Minnie is enough to keep Blaine awake for the next few minutes, though his awareness is only sub-par. Kurt reaches over and jostles his shoulder when they pull off the highway and onto an exit route, the two-lane road leading to a small shopping plaza and what looks to be a massive concrete fort.<p>

"Is that what we're headed to?" Blaine asks warily, noticing with a grimace that there are absolutely no windows on the blank, grayish walls.

Kurt nods in reply at the same time his brows knit together. "Hm, I guess this must be one of those bigger ones with its own hotel…"

"Wait, _what?_" Blaine remarks, his voice rising in pitch. "Kurt, I thought you said there weren't going to be that many people here!"

"Calm down, alright?" Kurt says firmly, shooting him a sharp glance. "There usually aren't. And we're only going to be staying here for a few minutes. Aren't you hungry, anyway?"

Blaine swallows sheepishly, resting his head back against the headrest. In all honesty, he _is _a little hungry. And he's sure that it's better to get food here where it's readily available rather than open up their backpacks quite yet. They're going to need to save as much as possible.

"O-Okay…only a few minutes, right?"

"Yes," Kurt says comfortingly. "We'll be out of there in no time.""

Once closer to the building itself, Blaine can fully appreciate how large it is, the squarely shaped structure covering almost a football field in length and swallowing the small LCD screen completely. The only part of the architecture that differs from its uniform, box-like shape is the small tunnel-like appendage sticking out from the ground floor. At the end of the tunnel is a large, industrial sized garage door in which, Blaine assumes, they are to enter.

"What's that for?" he asks out of curiosity. Kurt shrugs and lightly taps the gas, pushing them forward towards the door.

"They don't really have a name for it, but my dad just calls it the entry chamber. It's made so that no sunlight can enter the main part of the building. You'll see."

They approach the entry point and stop completely, Kurt waiting patiently for something to happen. Just as Blaine is about to ask, the door lets out a bell tone loud enough to rattle the car. Blaine clutches the edges of his seat nervously and, after the tone stops, the door slowly begins to open, revealing a long, empty tunnel. Blaine's eyes stayed glue to the screen in the car, watching as the wall of sunlight creeps further into the tunnel, eventually reaching the other side and casting light on yet another identical garage door.

Blaine pulls away from the dashboard as understanding dawns on him.

"So this thing is all closed in?" he asks quietly as Kurt nudges the gas again and nods.

They roll into the tunnel and stop towards the middle just as the door sounds another bell tone. Blaine glances at the rear view screen and notices the garage door behind them closing, sucking away the daylight with it. A feeling of dread sinks over him and he clears his throat, trying to dispel the fear.

It finally shuts behind them, the bang ricocheting off the walls several times before settling into silence.

"_You may now de-activate daytime driving,_"a voice announces from outside the car, obviously computerized and coming from unseen speakers. Blaine still flinches in his seat, quietly cursing to himself and running his hands down his face.

"God, why can't anything be run by a _person_ anymore?" he complains, ignoring Kurt's laugh.

Kurt taps the LCD screen with his index finger and presses a button that appears over the camera views. Suddenly, to Blaine's amazement, the blackness in the windows begin to drain away, running down into the frame of the car and leaving the windows crystal clear in its wake. Suddenly he can see everything around them: the texture of the concrete walls around them, the bright yellow lines painted a few inches away from the curb beneath them, the faint outline of the speaker in the top corner of the ceiling from which the voice had originated from.

"How…how does that even work?" he wonders aloud. Kurt smiles and shrugs again.

"My dad knows the technological side of it; I only know that it's some kind of UV blocking plasma," he says as the door in front of them begins to open, this time without the bell tone from before. Kurt pulls the car into the main building, into what looks like any normal parking garage, though it's surrounded by window shops, vending machines, bathrooms, and an automatic door leading to a steeply priced hotel.

Blaine has his face practically molded to his window, like a child inside his first carwash.

"You're dad's invention inspired all this?" He asks, hearing Kurt hum in approval.

Blaine takes in the emptiness of the space with a small sigh of relief before turning to Kurt, his eyes wide with amazement.

"He's a brilliant man…" he says sincerely, though he notices Kurt's face fall with sadness in response.

Something in Blaine breaks.

A determined feeling washes through him and he puts a hand on Kurt's arm, fixing the taller boy with a serious gaze.

"Kurt, I cannot thank you enough for what you are doing," he begins, waiting until Kurt meets his eyes. When he does, Blaine can see the guilt there, the conflict, and he hates himself for it.

"I owe you my life, Kurt. I owe you everything. You're giving up so much to do this for me, and I just want you to know how incredibly, intensely grateful I am. And I promise, Kurt, that I will find a way for you to contact your family. I will find a way to get you back to them, even if it kills me. You don't deserve to live like I do. It's dangerous; there's no guarantee you'll make it to the next day. You don't deserve that kind of stress."

Kurt is shaking his head before Blaine finishes, his eyes sparkling with emotion.

"Don't," Kurt begins. "Don't put that on yourself. It was my choice; I could have stayed home if I really wanted to and just given you the car. Blaine, I _chose _to come with you. I promised I would keep you safe." He takes a breath and briefly fixes his eyes back out the windshield. Picking an empty parking space, he spins around the wheel and pulls in, putting the car into park and slipping out of his seatbelt.

"Blaine, please listen to me when I say this, okay?" he says quietly, still staring at his hand that stays lightly clenched around the gear shift. "You are the only person in my entire life that's made me feel…happy, and complete, and just...like I actually have a _place_. Like I'm not some little add on that the world just forgot about. Not even my family, who I love dearly, knows me like you do."

Blaine feels the prickling of tears buds along the rims of his eyes and he hastily wipes them away, wondering when he became such an emotional wreck.

"I didn't want to lose you," Kurt continues. "I didn't want to let you go because you made me truly look forward to another day, to more experiences. You gave me hope." Kurt shakes his head, quietly berating himself. "I mean, I guess it's a little presumptuous of me to assume that you really feel the same way…I just figured that, maybe…I…I don't know…" he trails off, bowing his head shamefully and avoiding eye contact. Blaine's stunned silence seems to confirm something with him because he begins to reach for the door handle, shaking his head and murmuring, "I shouldn't have said anything." Just as the door opens and a breeze of cool air flows into the car, Blaine's hand shoots out to grab Kurt's forearm, the boy's face desperate and tear-streaked.

"Kurt, wait," he says firmly, though his voice cracks a bit. Kurt looks over timidly, stopping his movements and settling back down in his seat. He pulls the door closed again, cutting off the air and sound and leaving them in near privacy.

Blaine swallows hard, putting as much sincerity, as much raw truth into his eyes as possible.

"Kurt…you give me hope, too," he murmurs, his hand sliding down to Kurt's own and lacing their fingers together. "You give me so much hope, it _hurts_, and I begin to wonder what I ever did to deserve someone like you coming into my life. You _matter_, not just to me, but to the whole world. And, Kurt…" he pauses, taking a shuddering breath.

"Kurt, I think…I love you."

A beat of silence hangs between them before Blaine is suddenly pulled in, before his lips are crushed heatedly against Kurt, before his entire body explodes in a symphony of his own happiness and the world around them seems to dim and blur into the background, before all he can feel and hear and taste is Kurt and Kurt alone and everything, all meaning and reason shifts and fits together like the last piece in a newly completed puzzle.

They pull back after a while and stare unabashedly, a smile present on each of their lips.

"I love you, too," Kurt whispers. "And I'm in this for the long run."

Blaine's smile grows impossibly wider. They lean in slowly for another kiss, this time warm and sweet and soft, the garage around them completely forgotten.

Until…

"_GET OUT OF THE CAR!_"

Until everything shatters.

Literally and figuratively.

They boys jerk apart just as every window in the car _implodes_, spraying them with shards of razor like glass.

Kurt hears Blaine scream in pain as pieces catch in his skin, slicing through his face and neck and shoulders, flecking the seats and dashboard with drops of blood.

Every molecule in Kurt's body seems to freeze.

His pupils blow out black instantly, and his breath catches in his throat.

Small whimpers escape Blaine's lips and Kurt barely registers when the boy begins to pick some of the larger bits out of his arm.

"_GET OUT OF THE GODDAMN CAR!" _The unknown voice bellows again. This time, it is definitely not a computer.

Foreign hands reach in through the gap where the windows used to be, one pair grabbing hold of Blaine's hair and the other securing their grip beneath his armpits.

Blaine struggles profusely, screaming again when the hands yank _hard, _pulling him out of his seat through the window and snapping his head back.

"_KURT!" _he cries, the sound choking off and escalating to one of pure agony when his back drags against the rim of the window, through the shards still attached at the base. Kurt can hear them tearing through his t-shirt, sinking, _ripping_ through his shoulder blades.

But Kurt can't move. If he so much as flinches, he's sure to kill him.

He watches as Blaine's feet pass through the opening, watches as tall, dark figures toss him on the ground roughly and kick him once in his side, watches as Blaine groans and rolls into a feeble crouch, spitting and coughing up blood onto the pavement. It pools tantalizingly beneath his chin, drips mockingly down his throat.

"_K-Kurt…"_ his voice wavers before the dark figure kicks him again. Blaine gasps and chokes, collapsing to the ground and breathing harshly as blood dribbles out the corner of his mouth with every breath. The figures kneel down to his level and check to make sure he's immobilized before standing again, turning to Kurt and removing the dark masks that obscured their faces.

Kurt's chest fills with a horror unlike any he's experienced.

Because staring back at him is the same policeman from the lobby of his apartment building, smiling knowingly.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I know, I'm horrible. Get ready for the next chapter; it's going to be packed with plot and fluff and…well, everything! This is where it kicks into high gear people.**

**Please Review!**


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N: Okay, first of all, I want to apologize for the RIDICULOUSLY late update. I recently underwent surgery for a torn ACL and really wasn't feeling up to typing for a while. But even after I began feeling like myself again, massive amounts of school work began to take up **_**literally**_** all of my time :( And then, when I finally did get time to type, my stupid computer lost the file and I had to type the chapter over again. Ugh, I hate the world sometimes.**

**So anyway, I'm really REALLY sorry for all who guys who had to wait for this. Don't worry. I haven't given up on this story :) Anyway this chapter is on the longer side so I hope it sort of makes up for it. **

**Warnings: Graphic violence, derogatory name calling, and copious amounts of gore. **

* * *

><p>Kurt can't squander his remaining supply of air.<p>

He can almost feel the scent around him, how it hangs like weights in the air, how it brushes seductively past his inactive nose, how it twists and turns in a balletic dance through the interior of the car. He can nearly _hear_ its call, its voice not appearing literally to him but rather in the form of Blaine's wheezing breaths, of the boy's stuttering, frantic heartbeat...

…of the faint, but compelling drip, drip, _drip_ of blood on glass-littered pavement.

He can hear it.

It pounds in his ears like a tribal drum.

And as Blaine chokes periodically on his own breath, as he trembles and coughs, as it spatters in globs onto the ground beneath his chin, Kurt begins to feel a whirling in his skull, a lightness that brings panic and the reminder of decaying time. A voice, different from the hypnotic calling of Blaine's blood, flickers to life in his mind, shouting, pleading…

_Help him. _

But Kurt can't take his eyes off the policeman just outside the opposite window.

He can't stop staring at the man's face, the features drawn together in twisted malice and hatred, the smile so horrifyingly familiar it sends a jolt straight to the middle of Kurt's chest, knocking away the last of his clean air. Kurt sputters in surprise, his head pounding with the beat in his ears, with the _drip drip_ outside of the cab, with the wheezing, the coughing, the terrifying groans and whimpers. On an impulse, he yanks the collar of his shirt up and over his mouth and nose, gasping the slightly less tainted air that filters through the fibers of the cloth. His other hand whips over and grips the driver's side door behind him, his knuckles white and straining, his arm trembling with desire and fear and panic.

Half of the man's face hides in shadow, the blotches of darkness hugging the wide set plane of his forehead, conforming to the wrinkles around his eyes that accompany his threatening sneer.

Kurt doubts he will ever forget that sneer.

He's certain that, if he makes it out of the garage alive, he will remember it for the rest of the endless number of days that stretch before him. For the rest of what society has come to call life.

His head gives a tiny, weak shake of disbelief.

"Karofsky…" he breathes. "No…no…"

The man's grin grows impossibly wider until it's nearly manic, his teeth glinting in the artificial glow of the lamps above.

"Hey there, Kurt."

Kurt's breath hitches and quivers. His eyes finally break away and dart around the car, searching for an escape route. His head swivels to look out his window and he swallows with dread as he sees three more policemen standing just outside his side of the car.

He's trapped.

He turns at the return of Karofsky's voice.

"It's been a while, hasn't it, Kurt?" the man begins, clasping his hands behind his back and stepping casually forward, closer to the passenger window. "How long's it been, huh? Ten years? I'd say that's about right."

He takes another slow step and lowers his body to peer inside the car at Kurt, like an exterminator leering at a cornered mouse.

"Ten years…and you haven't changed one bit. Literally."

Kurt shudders violently as he notices the nearly imperceptible change in Karofsky's demeanor, at the way his hateful eyes grow darker, shinier, _hungrier_.

With trembling lips, Kurt forces a small pocket of air through his throat to form a few fearful words.

"_You've_ changed a lot," he whispers.

He's right. The Karofsky he knew at McKinley is only a shadow of the one standing in front of him, the boyish features replaced with muscled masculinity. The man is almost twice as built as he was before, his stature straight and solid, his arrogance giving off an aura of power and invincibility. The only recognizable trait is the trademark smirk and glare, both disgusted and perverse.

Kurt knows now why he hadn't recognized him at the apartment building; there had been too many differences and too much panic to fully focus. He hadn't been on top of his fear. He had put Blaine in danger.

"Yes. I have," Karofsky states candidly in response. He draws one of his hands in front of him, examining the inside of his wrist with mild interest. A small scar consisting of two darker pinpoints and a faded crescent rests on the deathly pale skin. After a moment of tense silence, he glances back at Kurt from beneath the lids of his eyes. "But unlike you, I decided to wait until I was older to take the plunge. You have to be at least twenty-one to join the force and, since football wasn't an optimal career path for me, I decided to go another route. It gave me a chance to find myself. To find my calling. I bulked up, as you can see," he paused with another smirk. "And then once I was changed, I signed up for the required restraint classes in order to be considered for a position on the squad. I passed them with flying colors."

Karofsky smiles even wider at how Kurt's body grows ever more tense as time goes on, as the scent of Blaine's blood permeates everything in the immediate vicinity. Not even Kurt's shirt can mask all of it, and it slowly begins to seep into his mind; it begins to _unhinge_ him.

"Restraint classes are a necessity, you see," Karofsky drawls, turning his body partially so his eyes rest on Blaine's writhing figure, the boy still spitting up drops of blood here and there, past the point of groaning and gasping, enduring the pain in a choked off silence.

"Being a part of this system means you are bound to encounter rogue humans at some point. Sometimes, if the situation calls for it, you're forced to get rid of some that possess unfit blood to be sold on the market. You know these kind," he says, his eyes narrowing as Blaine attempts to pull himself off the concrete, only to lose balance and collapse again, his mouth gaping with pain. "The diseased, the drug users…you can't keep them and you can't let them go. So there's only one other option."

He looks back over at Kurt, keeping his body turned away. "What life has not taught you yet is the difference between packaged blood and fresh blood. Because, there is a difference. A _huge _one."

Without hesitation, Karofsky bends down and fists his large fingers in Blaine's hair, yanking the boy upwards and onto his feet. Blaine lets out a strangled yelp but does not struggle, perhaps too exhausted or too frightened to summon the nerve. Two other police step forward to flank him, grabbing Blaine's arms and twisting them roughly behind his back.

Kurt's breaths are short and raspy, his eyes darting back and forth between Karofsky and Blaine, between the sadist and the victim. Blaine's face is white with pain and fear, his lips no longer sporting the healthy, natural pink Kurt has come to love. A few trails of red spill from his mouth and down his chin, disappearing temptingly underneath the curve of his jaw. The boy's breath whistles raggedly through his clenched teeth and send shivers of sorrow and terror down Kurt's spine.

"This," Karofsky begins, gesturing to the tracks of red, "is so, _so _much stronger than what you buy at a store, so much more _potent_. The farming companies; they knew that an average man couldn't control himself if presented with the original, organic product. So they decided to find a solution. They infused chemicals to dull the effect, to dilute it. Consequently, this made the actual nutritional value plummet. But what they found out was that, rather than being a drawback, this was a bonus. It meant people would be buying a less fulfilling product more often than buying a more fulfilling product less often. It meant more dollars in the companies' pockets."

As Karofsky trails off in his digression, Blaine begins to stir, tugging weakly against the policemen's hold.

"K-Kurt…_please_…" he rasps before Karofsky turns on him with a horrifying glower.

"_Shut up_," he growls, simultaneously drawing back his fist and slamming it into Blaine's jaw with a dangerous amount of force. Kurt's stomach lurches with desperate fright and terrible desire as Blaine's face crunches beneath the policeman's knuckles, his head whipping sideways much too fast. The sound of his scream blasts through the garage and Kurt see's his eyes roll back in their sockets before his body slumps like a dead weight. The only things holding him up are the two men at his side. Silent tears build and fall down Kurt's cheeks.

"Now," Karofsky continues, his brow still set in a glare. "The reason I'm telling you all of this is to drive home the point that, no matter what your goddamn fairy mind chooses to think or believe, _humans are our prey_. We _feed_ on them, sometimes for sustenance and, hell, sometimes for the _fun _of it. It's our natural instinct."

Kurt swallows against the drum in his head, against the fluctuating shadows lining his vision, slowly but surely turning his world a deep burgundy. His hands are trembling so violently, the one gripped to the door makes it rattle in its frame.

"But you, for some unexplainable reason, choose to go against your nature," Karofsky continues, his voice dropping to a lower, more threatening tremor. His entire body tenses with unmistakable anger and loathing. "You choose to be a traitor to you own kind. You choose _this_," he spits, pointing a finger at Blaine who now remains hanging in the policemen's grip, unmoving, lifeless. "You choose this _thing_ over your own world, your own _family_. How _dare _you? Is it really that important of a plaything that you'd keep it to yourself and deprive the rest of the world of a meal?"

He leans away from Blaine and back towards the car, dipping his head through the window this time, his face closer to Kurt than ever before.

"Did you really think I wouldn't recognize you back in the city?" He hisses menacingly. "Did you really think I'd be that stupid? You know Kurt, I've always known that you were a disgusting little faggot, but I never pegged your scrawny ass as inconsiderate."

Kurt's entire body _shakes_, his eyes wide and staring, his breath gasping, wheezing, shuddering…

His tongue slicks unconsciously against his fang-like canines.

His stomach _hurls_, his chest _aches_…

The smell…it's too much.

Karofsky pauses, examining the boy coming to pieces in front of him, and grins.

"You're going to _crack,_" he says darkly. "And I'm going to stand by and watch as you shred your precious little toy to pieces."

Kurt begins to shudder audibly, his head twisting around, looking for something, _anything_ that could stop him. But Karofsky's patience wanes quickly and the man reaches in and grips Kurt's face forcefully, twisting it back around. A short laugh escapes his lips before he shoves the hand he'd used to strike Blaine less than an inch from Kurt's mouth and nose.

And everything, every sound, smell, taste, and sensation, _explodes. _

Kurt's glinting pupils retract and then burst outward, nearly matching the circumference of his golden irises.

Every single thought process in his mind immediately shuts down.

Because, the hand that rests in front of him, the hand of the man he fears and hates the most in the world, is _smeared_ with Blaine's blood.

* * *

><p>"Quinn, why do we have to keep waiting? We've been trailing these guys for hours. I'm bored; I want some <em>action<em>—"

"_Shut it_, alright? I told you on the way that this kind of thing is a delicate process. You can't just barge on in; you have to wait for the opportune moment."

"But all these guys have been doing is sitting and talking —"

"_Hey_!"

Silence fills the air, a sharp, tangible warning. The eager boy's words die and hang between them.

"Don't call talk about those _things _like they're people. They're not like us."

"But…" the boy protests weakly, "they were at some point…right?"

Another beat of silence. But this time, the tired girl is massaging her temples delicately, moving her pistol temporarily to the holster on her belt. She sighs heavily and squeezes her eyes closed, wishing, _praying_ that all this is some god-awful, extended nightmare she would wake from.

"Sam…" she murmurs petulantly, shaking her head the way a parent would when scorning a child. "Just…grow up a little, okay?"

She opens her eyes in time to see the boy swallow heavily, hiding his misery behind the façade of innocence and childishness.

"I…okay…" he replies after a while, his eyes downcast and sorrowful. "Sorry…"

Quinn chooses not to respond, instead letting her head peek around the corner again and observe the bizarre interchange between the two creatures in the car.

The engine is off and they don't show any sign of emerging any time soon, both of them engaged in some kind of important conversation that involves somewhat intimate body language. Her head cocks to the side in confusion as she sees their two silhouettes join in what must be—_has_ to be—a kiss, a kiss so meaningful and heartfelt she can feel it in her bones only from watching, a groundbreaking thing, a miracle. Her mind twitches with intrigue as she sees their outline of their arms and hands, tracing and memorizing one another's face as if it were something holy or sacred, like two deities blind to their own individual elegance.

"I don't understand this…"she mumbles to herself, her fingers absentmindedly brushing against the comforting steel of her gun, as if the small contraption could explain and justify this anomaly, this rarity of feeling and compassion.

She has been tracking the pair since they left the city. Her interest had been piqued at the sight of them entering the parking garage together, when she'd realized the shorter of the two was indeed human and not the excuse for life the rest of the city was filled with.

It's extremely rare to run into another human nowadays. And when one does, the poor fellow is usually twisted out of his mind, every function stunted with fear and terrible memories that recur over and over like a broken tape. But, as she crouches behind the sheltering plane of the wall, she can tell this one is unlike any she's encountered outside of her colony. He seemed alert back in the city, frightened nonetheless, but whole. He seems whole now.

And he's sucking face with a vampire.

Quinn's face sinks into a frown.

"There's got to be something wrong with this picture," she mumbles again to herself.

"Why, what's going on?" Sam questions rather loudly.

"_Shush!_" she hisses, eyes darting back to the car, where the vampire and the boy are still tightly embraced. "What are you stupid? We'll get caught."

"What's going on…?" Sam asks again, his voice dropping down to a whisper. Quinn rolls her eyes with an exasperated sigh and furrows her brow.

"I've never seen this happen before, "she answers. "A human and…one of _them_, together. It's not natural."

Sam's lips purse in confusion. "Is it because they're both guys? Because that's kind of an unfair judgment, Q—"

"Sam. _Shut. Up." _She spits with gritted teeth. "I _mean_ that there's got to be some kind of motive for the vampire. Blood, maybe…or sex….or sex_ and then_ blood, if it decides to use him and then kill him after. It's just bizarre that it would got to all that effort to get it out of the city…maybe he didn't want to share."

Suddenly noise begins to echo through the interior of the garage, faint but distinct. A group of men dressed in uniforms—authority figures, no doubt—saunter quietly up to the lone car, some with short, blunt objects in hand. The human and creature don't seem to notice, too wrapped up in their exchange to realize what surrounds them. Quinn backs up behind the corner, keeping the majority of her head out of view but nevertheless allowing herself to watch the events unfold.

The peculiarity of the situation dawns on her when she notices the black masks obscuring their faces, but she doesn't get the chance to delve into it further before they rear back in unison and _bash_ the windows in with a few devastating blows. Their clubs send the glass flying in all directions, though most of it is directed inwards at the two inhabiting the car. The shards that fly astray glance off the side door, twirling in the air and catching the lights above like razor sharp confetti as it rains onto the concrete. Quinn gasps audibly in surprise, but thankfully it goes unnoticed from beneath the cacophony of bellows and screams emanating from both the inside of the car and the burliest officer.

She can hear the human as clear as day, can see him through the now busted back windshield as he pinches something out of his forearm. She would not have known what it was had the small piece of glass not glinted in his grip.

"Sam…" she breathes her eyes wide with shock. She watches in horror as two of the officers step forward and reach through what is left of the passenger window, grabbing a hold of the dark haired boy and _yanking_ him through. The sound of glass shards tearing through his shirt and skin reach her even through the sound of his screams and she grits her teeth against a wave of emotion, one so strong it threatens tears in even _her_ eyes. She reaches her empty hand back and fumbles in the air before Sam finally accepts it in his, and is immediately comforted by the warmth there.

Quinn chances a look back at Sam and is greeted by the strong, mature expression he adopts in situations such as these, so different from before it's almost as if a light switch had flicked on in his brain. She doesn't smile, but instead gives the blond boy's hand a small squeeze, feeling a comforting warmth spread in her chest. This is why she brings him on these types of missions. Not entirely because he's strong, or cute—though those are definitely contributing factors—but because, when the time comes, he acts as her anchor. Her grounds her in place, like the roots to a flower in a strong wind.

Quinn looks back just in time to see the rubber sole of a boot connect with the boy's torso.

"Oh god…" she grimaces, watching as he coughs and sputters up mouthfuls of blood, his choked off gurgles echoing against the walls. "Sam, what do we do? These _monsters_ are killing him…"

"I'll radio Mike and Rory to get down here."

"Where are they right now?"

"Mike's scouting the second floor and Rory's right behind him. Don't worry' they're fast. They'll get here soon."

Quinn nods, her face set in businesslike determination though her insides feel like a swirling torment of confliction. Her left hand curls tightly around the butt of her pistol and she takes additional comfort in the feel of textured metal beneath her fingertips, reveling in the sense of power she is awarded, like a shot of adrenaline to her limbs.

The largest of the officers is facing towards the car now, speaking quietly to the smaller, brown haired creature still sitting in the driver's seat. Upon closer inspection, Quinn notices that it is covering its face with its shirt, shrinking into the corner of the seat in fear. Its face is scrunched up with a mixture of pleasure and disgust, but either way the tautness of its muscles indicates a high level of discomfort and desperation. A small flicker of curiosity lights up in the back of her mind, a fragment of thought, nothing more.

_What if, _it begins_, the creature actually cares for the human? What if it's different from the rest of them_?

But she shoos the traitorous notion away with a scoff.

Apparently she'd lost track of how long she'd been watching them, because all of a sudden a hand grips her shoulder lightly and Mike's voice sounds in her ear.

"What's the game plan, Q?"

Quinn manages to cover the small jolt that the contact caused and turns to face her team. Mike, as tall and lean as ever, towers in the small corner of their hideaway. Rory, much shorter and a tad bit wider framed, leans around the dancer and waves meekly, still not accustomed to the groups operative style.

"How's the rest of the building doing?" She asks, skipping pleasantries to save time. Mike gives a thumbs up, responding shortly with an "All clear."

"I killed one of them just now," Rory pipes in from behind Mike in his Irish drawl, an excited sparkle giving extra life to his olive eyes. "We were walking along the edge of the wall when one of them got out of their car. Mike was reloading so I got to shoot it. I had pretty good aim if I say so my—"

"That's nice Rory, but you can tell your stories later. We have a situation here," Quinn interrupts. She gestures silently around the corner of the wall and allows the two of them to draw their own conclusions, though it's pretty obvious now that the human is being held forcefully upright and his face, chin, and shirt are soaked in blood. Rory gasps in surprise and Mike's lips pull down in a frown.

"How long has this been going on?" he asks, his eyes still fixed in front of him.

"A few minutes," Quinn responds immediately. "I think the boy is unconscious now. At least, he was moving a lot more a moment ago."

"So, how do you think we should handle this, then?"

Quinn ponders the question for a minute, pulling out her gun and idly switching off the safety.

"Mike, take off your silencer. The more noise we have the better our advantage; they don't seem to be expecting any company so it'll be easier to startle them if we go in shooting. Sam, you and I will take the two holding the boy and the big one next to them. Mike, since you're a good shot, I'm assuming you can take out the ones standing by the trunk from here; get them now while their backs are turned. After that there are three more standing on the driver's side that we'll divvy out when the time comes. Everyone okay with that?"

Sam and Mike nod together, their brows set and their mouths pressed into a thin line.

"Wait," Rory cuts in, "what about me? I didn't get an assignment."

"You're in charge of covering our backs. You're the lookout in case those _demons_ send any backup."

"But…but you're not letting me fight?"

Quinn barely conceals her exasperated sigh. "Look, you're a newbie and we can't risk you getting yourself into trouble. We're all going to be busy with our own kills, and we don't have the time or manpower to save you. Once you go through full gun training and target practice you can help us fight, but until then, it would be absolute stupidity if I sent you out there."

Before Rory has the chance to protest again, Quinn cuts him off a final, sharp comment. "Just because they're only armed with sleepers doesn't make them any less dangerous. Get one of those lodged in you and you might as well consider yourself farmed already."

Rory swallows heavily at the word 'farmed' and steps backward, lowering his head in embarrassment.

Quinn gives him a small, empathetic frown before turning back to Mike and Sam, both of her hands wrapped firmly around her weapon, her index finger nudging at the trigger.

"On three."

* * *

><p>Nothing makes sense anymore. Nothing is <em>concrete<em>. The only thing he can fully trust to be reality is the thoughts swirling in his mind, no matter how dulled they are with panic and fear.

_I thought dying was supposed to be peaceful and happy_, his inner voice wonders. _I thought you were supposed to feel warm...warm and just like you were floating…but I'm not floating, I'm drowning…why am I drowning…?_

Blaine's body sags motionless in his captors arms, his legs too exhausted to hold him upright on his own. The searing pain from before died down a minute ago and all that's left now is a numb and incredibly uncomfortable pressure on his chest, a weight that suffocates him slowly and yet at the same time allows him to breathe. With each ragged inhale he can feel the weight getting heavier on his lungs, and for a moment, Blaine's bleary mind debates whether he would prefer the pain over the horrible pressure. If he could make a sound, he would. But he can't. His throat is practically on fire.

Besides, he's screamed enough for one day.

He never thought about dying before the plague hit. And even after the plague, after he'd started running, he'd always known for some reason his own death would be quick and painless, something he would most likely inflict on himself so that nobody else could. He never contemplated what it would be like to die slowly. But who would? Who could imagine that torture, realistically?

The speech going on around him passes in and out of his ears, some registering with him and the rest completely ignored. He doesn't have the energy to focus on them. His world lies shrouded in a haze.

He can barely see the blurry outline of the largest officer standing in front of him, the man's muscled girth acting as a wall between him and the car. Blaine can hear small snippets of what he is saying, and the boy somehow registers that the man is talking to Kurt, calling him names, mocking him, taunting…_You little fairy, you dirty faggot…_

Blaine wishes he could stand up and tell the man to pick on someone his own size.

The darker side of his mind scoffs in response.

_Since when have you ever stood up to a bully? Coward…coward…you ran away…_

'Shut up' Blaine tries to say, but the only action his body allows is a slight movement of his lips and an almost inaudible, breathy moan.

_Kurt….Kurt where are you?_

He tries to open his eyes for the first time since they closed, and the florescent lights shoot daggers behind his retinas, making his world spin and his stomach heave.

_Moving….everything's m-moving…why can't I move…?_

He tries to shift his body somehow but all that amounts is a sort of twitch, his attempt immediately followed by a sharp jab in the back from the officers holding him, their gloved fingers digging cruelly into the long, bleeding gashes.

Blaine's body is reintroduced to the concept of pain. His eyes and mouth drop open in shocked agony, the twirling world around him almost forgotten. His abused throat refuses to allow another scream, settling for a quiet, choked off "Aah". He's weak. He can feel the waterfall of blood soaking the back of his shirt, reaching all the way down his jeans to the middle of his thighs. Eventually the torturous pain dies down and is yet again replaced with the pressure, even worse now from the short, jagged breaths he'd taken. The debate from before regarding the preference of pain over pressure seems ridiculous to him now. He'd gladly take the pressure. But even before that, he'd much more gladly take unconsciousness, possibly even death. Only if it meant some relief.

Suddenly, just before his eyes begin to drift closed again, a low growl cuts through the air.

Blaine's mind sputters into action. Small shots of strength pulse into his limbs. With the jolt of awareness comes the aching of other parts of his body—his jaw, his ribs, his back, his scalp—but he doesn't care in the slightest. Something about that growl had resonated with him, something about the delicate way in which it had been voiced, though mixed with wildness and ferocity at the same time.

The sound had been, unmistakably, Kurt's.

Blaine's wide gaze is fixed on his shoes, his head hung past his shoulders. After a small moment of preparation, he lifts up his face to look straight ahead, ignoring the way everything registers as swirls and blurred splashes of color. His stomach doesn't agree in the slightest, and he's forced to swallow back vomit, but as his equilibrium catches up with him he begins to see in more detail. Blaine begins to see that the largest officer had stepped out of the way of the passenger window, allowing easy visual access into the cab, much to Blaine's desperate excitement. He can see the blurred silhouette of Kurt now, and a feeling of relief overcomes him so strongly he lets out a happy, tear filled sob.

"_Kurt_…" he attempts to say, but all that comes out is the sound of the consonant and an exhaling breath. A large small pulls and stretches his cracked lips.

He wishes the garage would stop teetering on its axis so he could see the boy he loves clearer. In order to make this a reality, he summons all the remnants of strength in his body to pull his shoulders up around his chin, allowing his head to rest in them as if they were a steadying base. Somehow his plan manages to work, and everything shimmers back into focus, like the turning of a camera lens.

But once the clarity solidifies, Blaine's heart drops down into his stomach.

Because the person staring back at him is not his Kurt.

If one was to look at it from a logical point of view, they may argue that, yes, this being _is_ Kurt, just not in his usual form. But no matter how convincing the evidence, Blaine would not agree.

The Kurt he knows doesn't look this…this _feral_.

The once golden eyes are replaced with ones as black and sinister as a great white shark, glinting with desire and hunger and an inherent _evil_ that sends violent shivers down Blaine's spine. The brown haired boy lets his tongue glide along the upper set of his teeth, lingering on the sharpest pair and breathing heavily through his nose, all remnants of civility—of _humanity—_utterly and completely gone.

A snippet of a memory is pulled from the back of Blaine's mind, from when he'd hit his head on Kurt's shelf in his closet. He remembers the look on Kurt's face for that one, tiny moment, how the boy's features had betrayed that same _want_…that same _need_. But only for a moment, because Kurt had then thrown himself onto his bed.

But this time there are no scented pillows to save him.

"_Kurt…no…no no no no…_" Blaine whispers raggedly, the tears from a moment ago taking on a different meaning, changing into ones of fear and sorrow and heartbreak. They trail down his cheeks, mixing with the tracks of red to create sickly blotches of pink.

The not-Kurt begins to crawl towards him in the car, unblinking eyes never leaving Blaine's form as he crouches in the passenger seat and curls his fingers around the base of the ruined window.

"_K-Kurt it's me!" _Blaine shouts, though his throat feels like a tearing piece of paper. "_It's Blaine! It's me! I love you! Come back to me!_"

His words are barely distinguishable through the sobs and tremors.

It's the end, isn't it?

What a way to go…

Blaine closes his eyes. He doesn't want to remember Kurt like this. He waits for the pain, waits for the oncoming of death.

What he doesn't expect is for everything to literally ex_plode_ in a cloud of red around him.

A _BANG _ricochets off the concrete walls, so loudly that it nearly shatters Blaine's eardrums. All that's left it a high pitched, squealing ring that sends shooting pains directly to his temples. Through the ringing he can just make out sounds of panicked screams and yells—one of which he recognizes to be the largest officer—and heavy thuds. All around him seems to be underwater, time speeding up and slowing down at precisely the same interval, though Blaine cannot tell which.

He opens his eyes again in time to hear another deafening _BANG _andsimultaneously_, _his entire right side becomes drenched in a warm wetness. Blaine lets his head turn on its own accord, gritting his teeth against the wave of nausea, and comes face to face with one of the officers holding him up.

Only…

The man doesn't exactly _have_ a face anymore.

In fact, three-quarters of his head seem to have been blown away.

Cracked slivers of skull drop from the area and onto the cold shelf of his shoulder. Small sections of skin and flesh droop like slabs of uncooked bacon, falling to the floor with loud, moist squelches.

Blaine can't help it when his stomach finally decides to call it quits. His entire body rocks forward and he vomits onto the concrete. The image of the man—or what is left of him—appears branded into his memory, permanently scalding him…forever _burning_ him. It takes a few moments before the body of Blaine's captor sinks to the ground, almost taking him with it. At the last second Blaine manages to pry the dead hand off of his arm, leaning into the other man to his left for support, shivering with fright and horror, his mind repeatedly chanting '_no…no…why this?...oh god no…' _

He chances a glance at the car and is both relieved and terrified when he realizes that Kurt is no longer there.

After a moment, the man he is clinging to seems to find his bearings. With a frenzied motion he yelps, "Get off me!" and shoves Blaine away, sprinting in the other direction to flee the scene. Just before Blaine's wobbly legs give out from under him, he hears another _BANG_ and sees a hole appear in the man's upper back, spattering a nearby column with an ungodly amount of red.

His entire body trembling, Blaine takes one step forward and then collapses, the side of his face scraping against the rough texture of the floor.

He sees another policeman a few yards away lying in a puddle of his own blood, his right arm only remaining attached by a torn muscle and a few putty-like sinews.

"_Oh god…_" Blaine rasps, unaware of the words escaping his lips. The ringing still assaults his ears, and he can feel the stuttering, rapid pulse of his heart pounding in behind his forehead.

With dazed eyes, he rolls onto his back and stares up at the lights, desperately trying to escape the massacre happening around him.

And, almost as if the world is mocking him, a still-walking corpse—the body so battered it resembles Swiss cheese—hobbles its last steps and drops to its knees, falling directly on top of the horrified dark-haired boy.

The weight crushes Blaine beneath it. Its head lay twisted and sideways on Blaine's chest, the one remaining eye boring into the boy's own silent stare.

Blaine lets out the loudest scream he's ever produced. His entire body convulses in sheer, raw terror, trapped beneath the tonnage of the dead man. Black dots crowd his vision and threaten to swallow him whole.

At this point, he'd welcome anything at all.

But as soon as it came, the weight suddenly vanishes. A hand presses firmly over his mouth to quiet his screams and the black dots disappear, revealing the—very much living—face of a girl.

_A girl?_

Blaine blinks in surprise, trying to distinguish hallucination from reality.

He sees her mouth begin to move, forming words he cannot hear through the screeching tone in his eardrums. He sees her waiting for a response, but he cannot give it. After a moment, her other hand begins to gently smack his cheek, a concerned look overtaking the solemn one before it.

But his mind can't stop repeating the phrase.

_A girl?_

Once Blaine sees the hazel-brown mixture of her eyes, his mind tacks on another part to the mantra.

_A human girl?_

Suddenly she looks away to somewhere out of Blaine's vision. He tries to follow her but his neck only turns so far and all he sees is the side of the demolished car. His head snaps back to its original position and he continues to examine the new stranger; her odd athletic clothes, her tightly pulled-back hair…

…the gun in her hands.

Blaine's breath freezes. She was the one who did this. She killed all of them. A thought immediately appears in his mind, one that scares him almost as much as the body had: _What happened to Kurt?_ With an insurmountable amount of effort, he tries to voice his question, only hearing muffled vowels through the haze.

But thankfully, the girl appears to understand. Her eyes immediately return to his face, giving him a questioning stare. He sees the name form on her lips—_Kurt?_—along with another line of inquiry.

"I love him," Blaine assumes is what comes out of his mouth. "Where is he?"

The blonde haired girl doesn't answer, instead biting her lower lip and sliding her thumb along the base of her gun.

"Where _is_ he?" Blaine shouts, and this time the outlines of his words are audible to him. He begins lift himself into a sitting position, but her hand restrains him and forces him back down. This is when he begins to struggle, his heart pounding faster and faster with each jerking movement. Jabs of pain light up from various parts of his body, but he keeps repeating the question. "Where is he? Where is he?"

The girl looks down at him with a mixture of pity and worry, and she calls over to the same place she'd been looking before. Blaine can just barely make out a few words.

"_Hey...problem…sleeper…"_

At least, that's what he thinks he hears.

After a few moments, another hand enters the realm of his vision, handing the girl what appears to be a loaded gun. Blaine stops his struggling for a split second as his inner voice announces something horrid:

_They're going to kill you_, _oh dear god they're going to kill you. After everything you've been through…_

Another heartbeat passes before Blaine starts to wrench away, shocking even himself with the amount of strength his body allows him. His hands reach out for something, _anything,_ his scratchy breathing sending flurries of lightheadedness to his brain. He can hear himself protesting vehemently, can see the girl lift a finger to her lips…

_Shhh…_

_No, no, no, stop, WAIT…_

A soft "tff" sounds from the gun and Blaine feels a sharp pain in his right thigh. Almost immediately, his movements begin to lose their strength, his thoughts begin to drift.

_W…what?_

His head tilts up weakly and his vision clouds over momentarily. When it returns, every line and shape seems softer, blurrier. The golden hue of the girl's hair is the second brightest color following the cluster of carnival red sticking vertically out of his leg. He dimly feels a sense of déjà vu, but he doesn't have the energy or awareness to process it.

Blaine keeps his stare fixed on his leg until the moment he passes out.

Even when the blackness blots out the light from his open eyes, he still can picture it in his head.

Something with feathers…


End file.
